Three is a Prime Number
by reinforced hell
Summary: It is well known that women live longer than men. It is also well known that wizards live much longer than muggles. What does this mean for witches? What does that mean for someone that can switch easily between the two genders?
1. Prologue: The New Society

**Prologue**

* * *

Following the fall of Voldemort, Harry had gone on to do the things that were expected of him: he had married Ginny, became an Auror with Ron, had two point five children and lived in a house with a white picket fence.

However, as Harry grew older, he became more and more aware of the issues he was seeing around in his society. As his firstborn went off to Hogwarts, eventually followed by his second, and third, he became worried.

As he climbed higher and higher in social standing, he saw more and more injustice and medieval methods practised. Finally, his muggle born haze had been broken from the surreal experience of magic.

When he had discussed this change with his friend Hermione, he was pleased that she had noticed, too. That meant he wasn't going insane. Then again, it was only because he mentioned it that even Hermione realised it. That meant that something was hiding the realisation, the various problems for even Hermione Weasley, founder of the Society for the Protection of Elven Workers to not pick up on it.

When Harry suggested it was a widespread cast Confundus Charm or other mind-altering magic, Hermione had reminded him that not everyone was as powerful as he was, in a way that was just Hermione.

She hypothesised that it was just the powers of propaganda at work.

The two had bonded over another topic of shared interest, and they had started having weekly meetings. The pair had tried to "awaken" their respective significant others,but they were too desensitised to be moved enough to join their weekly meetings.

Eventually, Harry had become fed up enough that he started a campaign. He started a cause for the betterment of Wizarding Britain, in his own way. As the cause gained awareness, and people realised that it was "their saviour" that ran it, people joined. As time moved on, their -being Hermione and Harry - cause gained strength, and of the first to join were, of course, Harry and Hermione's significant others, but also eventually Hannah and Neville Longbottom.

With the Potter Cause - and Harry only grudgingly allowed it to be called that - so strong, they thought that surely they'd be able to get the proper legislature through for them to succeed. After all, that was what the majority of the public wanted, as nearly everyone had a bone to pick with the current society, that the Potter Curse was meant to fix.

However, they quickly learned that change by civil means could not be done so easily with the current system in place, as some muggle born and Dark Lords of the past had found out. With the realisation things were a lot worse than they initially seemed, the Potter Cause quickly became a coup for a hostile takeover. It worked for Russia's Bolsheviks, why wouldn't it work for them?

Harry was able to finance most of their side of the civil war, and he had been responsible for coordinating attacks, and fighting, while Hermione ran logistics, Hannah took care of people's morale - having just finished two wars within the span of twenty years only to start another would lower any population's morale.

According to the British Ministry of Magic, Harry was a Dark Lord, and he supposed that he did fit the general description, the difference was that he was able to differentiate between civilian and military targets.

That, and his distinct lack of monologuing.

During the final battle wherein the Ministry of Magic capitulated, unfortunately, Harry's wife had been a part of the attacking force. Ginny's death only made people rally to Harry's name more, however, and Harry exerted his grief and anger at the last bit of resistance of the Old Ways.

After the Final Battle, Harry and his children mourned their lost family member, and as did everyone else with their lost. It was time to rebuild again, but this time, it was not based on the Old Ways or the Ministry of Magic. This time, they were a new society. This time, there was a need for it to be changed.

Harry only managed to take the smallest, selfish consolation that the charge wasn't based entirely on his unwanted fame. Instead, it was based somewhat on the need for change, and his wife being made a martyr.

Mostly Harry was just grief stricken by all the death he'd seen, and busy with the work of rebuilding. Part of that reformation was the creation of a new government system.

* * *

It was rather expected of the three - since they headed the cause - that Hermione, Harry, and Hannah take rather high positions in the new government.

Hannah was rather liked by the populace, them having remembered her to be the one lifting their spirits, and being a genial godsend for the people during the dark period. By this fact alone it was enough to get her the position of the Head of State. It helped that before the Cause, she was rather interested in politics, and was the driving force behind most of the political moved during the cause. Much of them were ingenious, and if it wasn't for the broken system she had to use, their cause would have been successful without a bloody takeover.

Hermione was rather instrumental as well, having worked on the legality side of things. During that work, she had found her calling to the legal profession, and as such, she was made Chief Justice. However, in this case, the Chief Justice was responsible for overseeing the enforcement of law, and the judicial system that was put in place. She was a type of governor general, but she was not responsible for signing off on laws and instead was part of a supreme court.

Luna, rather surprisingly to some, had shone as a light working in R&D during the war and had stayed on with working as the head of the more scientific leaning branch.

Harry, however, was not interested in law, politics, or "discovering what man was not meant to know," as Luna rather dramatically put it. Instead, he had noted the fact that there always seemed to be Dark Lords and Ladies that popped up every now and again, where the only protection for the populace were police officers. Now, Harry compared this to what other, muggle, countries would do.

If a civil war broke out, it wasn't normally the police force that was responsible for fighting them, but the military.

So far, there have been no strictly "military" forces in magical history. Sure, there were the odd militias that were formed during the goblin uprisings, but they were rather ineffective considering that the last war was won by the goblins.

So, Harry founded what was the first true magical military. Harry also became the first Commander-in-Chief of that military, because what was a military without a true chain of command, and someone to head that chain?

The Commander-in-Chief was in charge of all things military. They were to be completely neutral to both law and politics. They were responsible for both defence and offence in any military operations. They had complete control of all military assets.

In homefront war, "martial law" was automatically declared, and civil liberties were placed on hold. That happened to include civil war, a serious terrorist threat, or an invading force. During that time, the economy was switched from a civil to a military economy.

The rest of the former DA generally gravitated towards service in the military, having been used observing under harry's command in the last two wars, and some being quite good at what they did.

As an interesting side note, the neutrality of the head of the military did not just stay with the head; all of the military forces were to stay completely out of all political affairs - they weren't even able to vote in elections.

However, they were paid quite well, especially during war time.

* * *

It was not long before the rather young governing body had had its first invasion. The other magical ministries were still in a pre world war way of thinking that of twisted words taken from Charles Darwin's mouth.

They believed that it was right to have war, as it proved that they were the superior species. It didn't matter that most of the time they were fighting their own species - they thought that ethnic origin was a differing species.

Idiots, the lot of them.

It was also why the tri-wizard tournament had been set up to begin with; it was the magical version of the Olympics for the three most powerful magical governments at the time.

The procedures put in place by "The Big Three" - as the populace had taken to calling them - proved fruitful as Harry already had a standing force to defend the population with. He also played to each species strengths and weaknesses, believing fully that segregation would only hinder the military's overall effectiveness in the long run.

Units designed for specific uses would have a specific species layout, to the best possible ability to take down the enemy. For example, a "nocturnal" unit would be heavily invested in species that have a natural "nighttime" edge. That meant people that belong to the ethnic category of vampires and werewolves of the Sapience Society as a unit.

Many muggle borns were pleasantly surprised to note that vampires and werewolves, despite popular belief, did not have an inherent dislike for one another.

It was true that they did not tend to stay in the same social circles, but they normally treated each other like normal people. Well, "normal" as in how Canadians would treat each other.

In some places, people did not tend to treat the average stranger all that well.

In fact, when the Nocturnal units were being created, and the two differing classifications were trained together, it was discovered that their abilities complemented each other.

Given how prepared Harry was for an incoming attack - the paranoid man that he was - it was no wonder that he was able to defend so well against the surprise attack.

And, as a message to all the other countries of the world that thought them weak, he went so far as to annexe the offending ministry.

It was the first step into what would be the first globally unified government, in the form of a magical utopian sentience society.

* * *

 **A/N: So there is the first chapter for TPN. I hope you all like the prologue, and please do let me know what you think of it so far in the reviews.**


	2. Chapter 1: Ebbing Borders

**Chapter 1: Ebbing Borders**

* * *

It was common knowledge that wizards lived very long lives, but that was nothing compared to the lifespan of witches.

For normal human beings, the average life expectancy of males was sixty-eight point two years, versus the female life expectancy of seventy-three point two years.

For the magical population, however, the average wizard could expect a nice long life of approximately one hundred seven and three quarters in years. That was not counting the outlier that reached an age of seven hundred fifty-five years because he was cheating by using the elixir of life. It was also a rather sad fact that every witch to ever live… had died one way or another.

A witch, however, had yet to ever die of "old age", a fact that they had kept secret from the male populace in fear of what some might do.

It was well known that women were already treated poorly, there need not be any more "reasons" for this.

So far, a witch had only been taken down by disease, fatal accidents, or murder, and never their own bodies giving out on them. It was why Griselda Marchbanks death had been looked at with such suspicion, and the head of the D.M.L.E. had personally investigated her death, only to discover a plot from a past student taking revenge for some bad test scores.

Amelia Bones had caught the culprit… well, because there was a valid reason behind the poor test scores.

By that time the Statute for Old Woman's Secrets, otherwise known as The Book Club, was in full effect, and Amelia was able to fudge the records a bit so that the perp got their deserved justice, but Griselda Marchbanks was publicly known to have died of old age.

"Publicly" only truly meant about half the population; the females would _know_ that it wasn't the true story.

Given this, it was no wonder that the Golden Trio were able to live long enough to witness the unification of the mundane world. It made things much easier for them, as now The Big Three did not have to liaise with multiple governments, and now only had to liaise with one. They still had to know all of the different languages they learned, and practice them, though.

In fact, languages were often rotated in official meetings. If they had to meet on a regular basis, they would pick a language that they haven't spoken in a while, and use only that language for the meeting. Unless, of course, the person they had the meeting with could not understand that language. It had originally started as a fun way to mess with people and then had become common practice.

It helped to know all the languages that they did, considering that the public that they governed spoke a myriad of languages, and they often worked with people that did not understand English.

In fact, it had now become a requirement to work for the government to know at least two different languages.

When the liaison with the mundane populace became confined to one government, it was less stressful for Harry, as now his branch did not have to track as many possible threats. They only had to prep for a possible attack from the human's alliance.

* * *

When the more mundane population had managed to set up a functioning colony on the moon of the planet, the magical populace thought it was about time that they looked to the stars - except for the centaurs; they were already looking to the stars.

Especially considering that the mundane - upon consideration it was deemed the proper term for the magicless populace - liaison had been fairly smug about that.

Well, until Hannah told them of the time when Hermione had used time travel to take more classes when she was thirteen.

They had had that light banter back and forth for as long as that particular person was in office - discussing the various advancements the two's population had achieved.

Back to the topic of space exploration, it was about time that the magical people got ahead of their mundane counterparts again.

There was only so much an enchanted blade could do, after all.

Of course, militarily speaking, they were almost on par in terms of "technological" level, as Luna had incorporated more modern, mundane equipment ideas with an extra magical flare to it.

They even had the equivalent of a nuclear bomb in the form of out-of-control fiend fire.

Long story short was that the magical races were very interested in space exploration, and after only a few years, it was possible for Harry to have the equivalent of military intelligence satellites. A few years after that, the scientifically minded individuals of the magical community, with proper funding and permissions, had sent a werewolf to the moon accompanied with a vampire - as they didn't take any oxygen, so they were easy - a goblin, and a witch.

To the surprise of everyone involved, the werewolf of the four did not change. In fact, the werewolf had thereafter had been able to not only control their change but was able to not be forced into one when the next full moon appeared.

After the new cure for lycanthropy was discovered, under the expense of the government, there was a new campaign for the transport of werewolves to the moon for the costly treatment. Though Harry couldn't voice an opinion on what the government was doing, on the inside he was ecstatic; it was saddening that Remus was not able to live to see that day, but at least no one would have to suffer as he had.

The next major milestone they achieved was only a decade after that, wherein they were able to set up their first functioning colony on Titan, one of Jupiter's moons.

They were able to learn from the disaster on the moon colony that glass domes were not a viable option to sustain a colony, considering that it was extremely easy to get cracks and holes in the glass. Following the same logic, wards were out ruled as the seal could not be guaranteed.

Despite these issues, the Magical Sapience Society was able to persevere and prevail in the end.

Then came the colonisation and general exploration of deeper, interstellar, space. A new colony was connected to the Floo network - which, apparently, was faster than anything the mundane populace had created at the time.

Part of the defences that Harry had ordered to be put in place were wards not unlike the ones that hid the magical havens of Earth. However, he didn't stop there, as he used the various other assets available to him to hide the people as best as possible.

Luna, among other that belonged to her department, had both the clearance and the curiosity required for them to be present while the defences were being placed. They were taking various readings and measurements, with a fair few non-invasive tests, to find out how the magic worked.

Before Luna's department, there were some magical departments that dealt with the mysteries of magic- namely the old MoM's Department of Mysteries. However, they never had taken the basic scientific methods to discovery. In fact, before The Cause, in most places, any mundane methods were heavily frowned upon. In some cases, it was to the point where writing with a pen instead of with the "proper" quill and ink were punishable by a month in prison, or a hefty fine.

Curiously enough, writing with a charcoal pencil was deemed socially acceptable.

Either way, after the defences were put in place by the experts in their respective fields, Luna had reported that magic affected reality itself. While not groundbreaking stuff - most having assumed as such, especially those with any experience in time-altering magics - it did explain why the various technological advancements of the mundane world were unable to "see" the magical world.

As an interesting, but very important note for further reference, the planet the populace had last found was named Shanxi, and was a planet that the Systems Alliance would eventually colonise.

In the exploration of the galaxy, the M.S.S. kept finding large - obviously artificial - metal constructs. Sometimes the constructs were obviously inactive, but other ones were obviously still in an 'active- but dormant' state. By then it was well known that magic did not exactly jive with any type of electronics, and every time that the magical populace wanted something that the humans invented first, they had to reinvent it to work as a magical source. Unless they were rather simple, of course, like a syringe injecting potions.

* * *

Now, when Harry went to get his regular checkup medically - meaning he had just survived another normally fatal incident - in that case, another failed assassination attempt - the healers had discovered something they had not before been able to find due to inferior methods. It turned out that Harry belonged to a rather small demographic to magically gifted humans. Normally a magical human was categorised in gender as being a wizard - or sorcerer - for male, and witch - or sorceress - for female. However, there were only a very rare few to have the special ability, even among magicians, and that was a metamorphmagus. A metamorph was technically neither and both the typical genders.

With practice, a metamorph had the ability to change from their base gender to the opposite gender. A base gender was something that a metamorph subconsciously chose when they were very young. That was not even mentioning their ability to change their base looks to anything they would want, something that was the basis for the most advanced magics professional cosmetic transfiguration masters used on their patients.

When Harry was informed of his untapped potential, he was understandably confused - but when he went over his past it made sense as to why he was able to grow out his hair so quickly when he was younger, or the extra speedy - even for most magicians - recoveries.

When Harry told his two closest friends at the time - Hannah and Hermione - he was rewarded with unexpectedly relief-filled faces. He had expected curiosity from Hermione, and joy from Hannah, but the relieved looks were definitely new. So, he decided to be the one to do the expected thing - he called them out on it.

"Well, you see Harry - you know that Hermione and I are female, right?" Hannah asked. Harry nodded suspiciously as he went to take his seat for their pre-business meeting tea. They chose to use Hungarian for that day's language. "Well, you know how the Statute of Secrecy is still largely enforced, despite there not being an ICW anymore?" Again, another nod.

This time, it was Hermione's turn to speak, "Well, the magical races being as secretive as they already are, witches got together to create their own statute- codenamed The Book Club."

And so began a very enlightening discussion for Harry, as he was let in on exactly what The Book Club was. He was also let in on why the two were so relieved - they wouldn't be outliving _another_ old friend, one they've had since they were still kids. That, and it was one less major secret they had to keep from a friend. As they worked in differing branches of government, they tended to have to keep certain things from each other as they did not have the clearance, sometimes. Didn't mean they had to like it, though.

The only reason why Harry was allowed to be let into the feminine secret was that a) Harry was technically female too, just without the issue of turning into a hell beast once a month, and b) he still fit into the category of no-one knowing how old they could get without dying of essentially, old age.

That was when Harry and co. were in their mid-sixties.

* * *

As time went on, people aged. As people aged, they tended to become closer to death's door. Such was the case for Harry's wizard friends ~ Hermione and Hannah were widowed at the wizened ages of one hundred, and one hundred thirteen, respectively.

By an added twist of fate, Luna Scrimgeour nee Lovegood was in the middle of divorcing her husband when he died of natural causes. Luna was still able to get his possessions because the man was yet to be divorced at the time.

It was also the point when the MSS gave the Systems Alliance permission to build a colony on Shanxi unawares to most of the mundanes involved that they had needed to ask permission to be there.

Harry had advised against having a mundane colony next to theirs as it created various liabilities. Hannah had done it anyway, stating that it was always a good idea to have as many friends available as possible to help in a possible future catastrophe.

Harry had rebutted with the fact of it utterly sucking if their allies pulled them into the fight, but had to concede to the political move. His job in relation to the Head of State was to offer the advice based on the military application. He did not know or understand the political side of things and instead had to adhere to the Concordia in being neutral to all things political.

In fact, Luna's department had invented a particular spell - that Harry was using at the time - that allowed the caster - not target, caster - to be completely neutral and unbiased with the option of complete neutrality, or tailored to a specific set of needs.

It was used extensively in all things government, and in fact had become part of the standard training that all legal professions took. It even made it into law that some professions had to have it active during any official business. For example, a Judge was required to be completely impartial in passing judgement, and they used the spell on top of their formal training to provide extra precaution.

However, the issue was that the spell did not last long, was very complicated to cast, had different casting methods for each situation, and that unless configured correctly it took away all bias. That included some of what made Harry so effective in his work - not only was his past that made him a paranoid son of a bitch count as bias, so too did his military knowledge.

Not to mention the risk of losing essential emotions like empathy and sympathy if incorrectly cast, which were essential emotions for social beings to have.

Harry used the spell nonetheless, but he was very careful to specify that - in that situation - Harry was only to become impartial to all things political, along with a few other possible biases that would illogically factor in without the spell. For example, one of the more common biases amongst the MSS citizens were those against unification - those that saw the species and not the person.

However, after the invention of the Impartiality Charm, there was a dramatic decrease in civil violence , as well as a wide range of problems that were already declining in severity, but were still a problem at the developers of the particular spell had gotten themselves an Order of Merlin, First Class each, and an entirely new honorific named after their project name.

It was a passing suggestion by Hermione to Hannah during one of the three's weekly get-togethers, as she had thought that as there were only the Order of Merlin's three class awards, and it would be a great way to promote the growth of scientific thought; it played to a certain type of greed.

Hermione had been right, too; after the Dalek (the original project name composed of the names of the magicals a part of the project) peace prize, there was a significant increase in applications to institutes of higher learning. It meant that, for the three, both Luna would stop complaining about a lack of numbers in her department, and that research would increase in speed.

* * *

 **A/N: This is a little longer than my average chapter, and yet I didn't get everything in there that I wanted. Ah, well, I'll just have to put it in the next one.**

 **Tell me what you think about it!**


	3. Chapter 2: Testing Boundries

**Chapter 2: Testing Boundries**

* * *

Harry had been on Shanxi when it had happened. He had also been on a rare and well-deserved vacation, too. That was why he hadn't gotten the memo as quickly as he would if he had been in his office.

He was sipping a long island ice tea, bathing in the light of an alien star, and thoroughly enjoying the irony of the young, off-duty Alliance soldiers salivating over the gorgeous look of the feminine body he was wearing at the time, while that body contained the mind of a one-hundred seventy-seven-year-old man.

Although being a fairly good bonus, the ogling was not why he was wearing a woman's body. Instead, it was more a matter of being in disguise so that there wasn't _another_ bizarre assassination attempt against his person. Harry was pretty sure the government would start sending him the medical bills he racked up, despite him being a part of running the damn thing.

The disguise was a sound idea, considering that not many people knew that he was a metamorph. He liked to keep it that way; the fewer people to know a secret, the more chance that the secret wouldn't get out. Unless magic was involved, of course, as then the information could be _policed_.

Harry had decided to have some more fun, and had gotten up from his tanning session, had formed a small smirk upon his softer features, and had walked with a determined stride towards the group. He turned many heads as he swayed his hips, clad in an old-fashioned bikini. He was looking for the attention, as in his mind it was not unwanted attention, but notice attributed to something he was actually responsible for.

Or that was not blown entirely out of proportion.

A silence fell among the _boys_ , as they anticipated what might happen, who the seemingly beautiful woman was heading towards to make their day. In spite of what they thought, they were not, in fact, the goal of Harry's walk.

Instead, he was headed to the beachfront bar on the alien world, and someone that happened to be a part of their profession. His smirk grew as he walked by the soldiers, and their faces had fallen in disappointment. They still had their heads turn to watch him go by, though.

He was seemingly passing the group, but then he reached his goal. She was dressed in the standard alliance military attire for her status, and from the quick check that Harry had made earlier, he knew that she was the highest ranking officer in the general area. She was not paying attention to Harry walk up, and instead was looking off into the body of water nearby. There was a moon orbiting Shanxi, so there were still tides lapping at the sandy shores.

Harry tapped gently on the shoulder, distracting the well-dressed servicewomen from her thoughtful pose. She did not jump; anything shorter than weapons fire would not be able to surprise her kind of train-induced awareness. She had known someone had approached, she just did not deem the thought pressing enough to require much more than an acknowledgement.

Such became apparent when the woman turned to Harry as she spoke, "Williams, I don't ca…" She had cut herself off, as she registered that it was _not_ Corporal Williams, the son of a high-ranking officer attempting to offer up advice. As Harry raised a finely shaped eyebrow, the woman had blushed at her own embarrassing act of assuming just who was trying to gain her attention.

Before the woman had another chance at speaking, Harry had instead leant forward and kissed her. The woman was surprised, and had not yet reacted before her fellow comrades were hooting and hollering at the rare sight.

The fact that it was someone that they knew, and was their commanding officer nonetheless, was only a bonus.

* * *

Harry finally got the call when he was in bed, at the mid of the night, curled up around someone that took entirely too long getting out of their armour. Groggily, he rolled over and picked up the offending magical item that did not look at all out of place for the time frame.

After all, the more advanced technology became, the more it appeared like magic to the uneducated eye. Something similar could be said if the analogy was reversed.

He activated the mirror's secure link, and said a decidedly impolite greeting in the form of, "This better be a matter of national security, or I swear to Merlin that I will bring back the firing squads of old just for you."

"Supreme Commander, sir, there is a problem." His second in command came in on the other end of the line, sounding slightly worried. Now, Harry had promoted this particular second to their position for a few very important reasons. The first was that the man had an impeccable service record. The second was that he was older than he was. The third reason, and possibly the most important, was that the man was a very competent and level headed individual.

The fact that something had required Harry's attention was worrying already, but added to the fact that his second sounded worried, it made Harry all that much more alarmed.

"Give me a sit-rep, now," Harry ordered.

"Sir, remember that issue you brought to the Director's attention?"

Harry did, in fact, remember that moment quite well. He had gotten chills just after saying that, and was honest enough to admit that he was a little fearful of what might be present in the form of a glass orb in Luna's department somewhere. "Yes, now be frank with me Frank," he offered another order with growing dread.

Then the words came that, unfortunately, confirmed that dread, "It is happening."

"Well, bollox."

"You might want to cut your vacation short, sir, as I expect there to be a request for our aid in the oncoming shitstorm."

Harry sighed, and with a decidedly softer tone he said, "Potter out." He followed that with disconnecting the mirrors. He then turned to the side, where he knew the soldier he had originally picked up lie. He was hoping that they were still asleep, but alas, they were not.

"So? What was that about?" She asked, curious about the call she had woken up to hear.

Harry smiled, and replied, "I cannot say, but I'm sure you'll find out soon enough." At the end, he had made a careless gesture to the scattered pieces of a military uniform. "Either way, I have to get going, love, as much as I hate to… dine and dash." For Harry's rather crude analogy, even after the night they had, he was still rewarded with a blush. He grinned roguishly for his efforts.

Harry loved his life.

"Will I ever see you again, Harry?" She asked hopefully, to which Harry was slightly saddened by his own answer when he gave it. One thing Harry liked about his name was that it was easily a unisex shortened form of either Harold, Harriet, or other similar forms.

"I'm sorry, but I don't think we will. The likelihood is just too low."

His Vacation may have been cut short by an impending war, but at least he had gotten some no-strings-attached fun out of the deal. And for someone with the mind of a one-hundred seventy-seven-year-old man, that was quite the vacation.

* * *

He had apparated from outside the woman's rooms to the closest command base after he had changed his features back to their default form. This, coincidently, looked like when his long dead wife had perished. Oddly enough, no one had ever questioned him about it, nor had there been any tests on how this was.

He was sure that there were many wild theories about why he didn't seem to age, and he thought that he heard one of the men talking about him taking a vampire lover at one point; his ears must have been playing tricks on him, for surely that could not have been right.

Either way, when he appeared in the colonies' main military logistics' centre, he was immediately assaulted with the noise of some _very_ busy analysts going about their business. The various guards posted had acknowledged his entrance with the proper procedure, and Harry had then made his way to where he was needed most – in the conference room, where he knew that there was going to be at least one of the two posted base commanders.

The Linked Communications and Information Directorate Room, or LiCaIDR for short, worked by first monitoring everything that happened in each LiCaIDR within one particular network, then that information was sent in real time directly into each and every person's mind that was in one of the linked rooms, filtered by what they should be able to perceive as if they were in each of the rooms at once. It was great for long distance co-operative work that could not be done with the previous methods. It even had, hovering over everyone, each of their names, rank, occupation, and which room they were in.

It was especially useful if that co-operation happened to involve something along the lines of a "friendly" game of poker. Honestly, with the ability to have complete control of his own features, it was understandable that Harry was very good at the game.

Harry stepped through the entrance to the LiCaIDR and immediately barked out, "Someone would you give me an update." The update came in the form of a brief burst of information fed to him by the room he was in, allowing him to comprehend and understand a lot of information in a very short amount of time. He comprehended it in the form of an induced hallucinated fast-talking person following him around as he moved about the room.

He joined the other people in the room in the various tasks of going over possible scenarios against a variety of foes, including one that had vastly superior firepower.

Idly, Harry wondered if the Room of requirement actually used shared hallucinations, and not actually conjured the items. He would have to message Luna sometime about that.

The situation was nominal, it seemed. The mundane military and governments had yet to ask for any aid. At that moment, they thought that they did not need it, and instead was just in a stage of producing a reactionary force to destroy the aliens that had attacked the allied ships investigating the Relay. Harry knew better, and it seemed that the analysts were in agreement that it was just the start of what would be a very large shitstorm.

The magical navy was being prepped for an incoming battle, as were the rest of the rest of the forces being prepped for war.

Not two minutes later the assumptions of those in the room came to be, as in the centre of the room, where the Combat Operations Coordinator table was stationed there were some sudden alerts. It appeared that some of the sensors found something and the automatic warning system triggered an alert. Harry moved from the separate station he was working at to look at what was happening. The previous screen showing the explored galactic map was then replaced by an incomprehensible display.

That was if one was not properly trained in the interpretation of dimensional space higher than the third degree.

Harry quite liked the most gifted versions of analysts. Their estimated projections were critical assets in most anything that was significant. Every moment like right then, Harry mumbled a very quiet thanks to Luna for heading the overhaul of the way Seers were taught.

Apparently, what he was seeing was the newest way that prophetic declarations were stored, instead of the often hard-to-comprehend utter rubbish that was kept before. According to the various science officers Harry asked regarding how the other dimensions could be properly displayed in the first place, they had answered with some very complicated stuff that was eventually simplified to him as, "Because the information is fed directly to your mind, and with the proper training that information can be interpreted correctly."

Apparently, they had discovered how to do this by studying true seers. When a seer saw a vision of the future, what actually happened was their foresight connecting to magic in such a way that they were able to peek into the higher dimensions, and thus see what could be. After that discovery, the various educators and scientists of the nation had had to come up with a better way of educating the seers so that their minds did not snap from interpreting an incomprehensible sight.

When they had finally been able to stop seers from losing their damn minds, and in some cases reverse the effects, it was relatively easy for them to apply the same method to other things.

What Harry took from the alert was that the Alliance would be successful in their counter attack, however, that would lead to a chain of events where the alien force would end up attacking the planet of Shanxi.

Then there was the problem of how they would treat the civilians. Including some of the magicals that would be caught in the fray. He particularly admired the off-duty veela that had raged on the avian aliens. It was like watching a battle between a peacock and a turkey, as the two trained avian-like beings fought each other. Harry was also proud to note that the veela was able to hold her own, and even protect the civvies around her.

If the proper officers had not taken notice in the next few months and awarded her a medal, Harry would personally give the order for them to be commended for their efforts.

Granted, it was yet to happen, but according to the record, it was fairly probable even with them having seen the images. Thankfully it appeared as though all of the magical sections of the world would be safe, as where they were was literally separated from reality. They would be hard pressed to find them, let alone stage a proper attack.

Immediately following the comprehension of what the analysts found, which in itself took but a moment, Harry began barking orders left and right, correctly assuming that they would be followed to the letter as they micromanaged their responsibilities. Harry loved the fact that he didn't have to micromanage, ever since he learned the delicate art of delegating the workload, and instead macro-managed like the leader he was literally born to be.

Didn't mean he liked having a predetermined skill set, but he certainly used it to the ;limit.

Harry was not comfortable with just issuing orders, though. He knew he was the best candidate, but he much preferred the times when he was in action. He also missed the times when he didn't have to give the "You don't want to know," stare when an officer a few ranks below asked the types of questions like, "Why are we attacking that desolate area?" He also didn't like the fact that people die following his orders, but long ago he became aware that it was just part of the reality of any war that people died on both sides.

That was why, when he felt that he was not needed, and could leave things in a subordinate's hands, he occasionally took a mission. He may be old, older than most wizards could boast to be, and so he took missions to keep himself on his toes.

He wouldn't be able to survive all those assassination attempts without it, and it wouldn't do to get rusty.

Normally the missions were highly classified, covert assignments to save from reading more people in than necessary, and were normally limited to very small teams. Most of the time Harry would take a commando mission - one of the most dangerous, as those were the ones that the commando had no backup and was generally cut off from the rest of the intelligence network.

At that moment, though, Harry was content to remain in the LiCaIDR, analyse the enemy tactics, and generally macro-manage.

When the alien force came knocking on their door, and the Alliance realised they needed help, the magical military would be ready for them.

* * *

 **A/N: So the First Contact War started, and Harry is readying the magical military for the oncoming action.**

 **For those of you that were interested in knowing, I got the idea of the government system from the two stories Hidden Sunlight, and Veil of Shadow written by someone with the pen name Stellar. I intend to put up stories that I gained inspiration from, and what ideas they turned out to be on** **my author page.**

 **I hope you all enjoyed this chapter and please let me know what you all think about it!**


	4. Chapter 3: Crossing Lines

**Chapter 3: Crossing Lines**

* * *

Apparently, the non-magical government did not want to call them in for help, which was slightly insulting. Then again, they could have been thinking that the magicals were _required_ to aid in a battle _they_ caused. Harry did not know which was worse, but he was so glad he did not have to deal with the politics.

He was pretty sure that he'd end up in wars more often than not - Gryffindor brashness did not bode well for diplomacy unless dealing with _some_ magical races.

Namely Goblins and Giants.

Harry kinda felt bad for those that educated the giants. Well, that was until he found out that they tended to consist of Vampires ~ he felt that they would be evenly matched.

The Systems Alliance was so reluctant to ask for their help that they even went as far as them choosing to surrender than to ask for help. Well, they were about to, if Harry did not feel personally insulted by the methods the avian race stooped to. They used methods fit only for criminals and worse - they took hostages and were willing to murder the innocent civvies if their demands were not met. However, it was not simply that the avian race had stooped to criminal tactics that bothered Harry - he would have allowed the mundane military to make fools of themselves if that were the case. Instead, it was that some of _his_ civvies were amongst the crowd, threatening to be executed. Most of which were too young or inexperienced to safely get away.

Luckily Harry had had the time to prepare some defences and plans to decimate the offending force in one fell swoop.

As in literally destroy a tenth of their presence in one move.

Harry said, "Now!" signalling all the positioned soldiers and their units to start the attack. His order was relayed immediately, and the magical race then _really_ became a part of the war.

* * *

She had volunteered for the mission she was on. Technically the entire armed forces volunteered for the missions they were assigned to, as the military was strictly a volunteer force only.

The point was that she knew exactly what she was getting into, and she asked for it.

Didn't mean she did not regret her decision, not that she did for the first while.

At least her best friend matilda was with her, but then again that could be counted as a bad thing, as her sister in arms was to go on the offensive.

Her joy was to protect the civvies, both magical and non from the stereotypical bank-robber type robbins. Seriously, they looked more like birds than _she_ did when she transformed into her fury form. At least they were all male, as that would help differentiate between friend and foe.

Just to be safe, though, she cast a little-known spell at all the friendlies to help her more wild side know what not to attack.

They got in position, finally, and the signal was received.

With her comrades, she then cast a very potent, powerful protection war against physical attacks. It wouldn't do much against magical attacks, but luckily for them, it appeared as though the aliens were magically impaired.

Then, as the aliens noticed something had happened, those that had _not_ been ones to power the shield, began casting the deafness hex at all the friendlies. The civilians began to freak out a little, having just lost contact with an important part of their everyday life. The aliens decided to begin firing at them about halfway through the defining of people, furthering their panic, only for said panic to die down due to a use of area-of-effect calming spells and most noticing that the weapons were not having an effect on their number.

After all the spells were cast, the banshee of the group got to play. Bethany opened her mouth impossibly wide and let loose her defensive wail. There was something to be said about a banshee wail's effect on unprotected ears, but it need not be said as it was quite evident by the bluebirds clutching their head in pain, and then shortly after that there was a nice new dark blue paint job.

Apparently, Bethany had been practising her wail, as she had not fallen down immediately following as most did, and instead only wobbled unsteadily before she righted herself. Either way, Lillian thought that Bethany would not be able to do another for some time.

Indeed, Bethany wouldn't be able to do magic for a few hours.

That was why Bethany went and picked up one of the enemy's rifles. The magical military was trained on the use of mundane weaponry, so it didn't take long for Bethany to figure out how to use the similar design.

Having passed the danger of a banshee's wail, those that could begin to reverse the effects of the deafness hex. Those that were still having problems with the soundless life finally calmed down with their sense fully intact again. In fact, Corporal Lilian Withers thought that they had repaired some of their hearing; she caught sight of an older gentleman taking something out of his ears.

However, Lillian couldn't expand too much on that thought, as it did not take long for the aliens to restart their attack. The ward stone was finally linked to the kinetic barrier, allowing the rest of the soldiers to change their attentions to more important things. Like the attacking aliens.

As weapons fire rained down on the shield of flickering light, the magical species took out their own firearms and inserted their second wands. They took aim and fired.

Most of them were using the M401 standard issue assault rifle. It was based on the very basic primitive designs of mundane weaponry. However, the ammunition used was vastly different; where the primitive versions of mass effect weaponry took the idea of accelerating matter to a significant 1% of the speed of light to kill something, the magical version didn't use matter at all.

The M401 used a constant connection to the user in order to run magic into a particular set of runes, and finally accelerated through a channel, then leaving the weapon. Depending on what setting the soldier had it set to, that burst of magical energy had a variety of different effects, anywhere from a standard stunner to a more explosive option of a simulated Bombarda. They could be set to automatic, semi-automatic, or single fire modes.

It allowed for a very versatile weapon, capable of anything between a non-hostile takedown from afar, to simulating a grenade launcher. Another added benefit was that if the opposing force got ahold of the weapon, they could not easily use it as they required both a constant connection to a nearby magical source and a fair amount of training to use them.

The problem came when a user had to place their wand within the weapon to have a link to their nearby source. Most magicals did not like going long without their wand easily accessible, but they got around that by using secondary - or for the absolutely paranoid, tertiary - wands. An even larger problem came when the magical became magically exhausted, which was the same as running out of ammunition for a mundane weapon. At that point, they would not be able to use magic for a while - depending on the person - and would normally become very hungry. It depended on the species what they needed to eat.

Back to the combat around the corporal, her and a few other defenders were freely firing upon the incoming aliens, from their chosen defensive positions. As the defenders provided cover fire in the form of semi-automatic fired _Reductos_ , the rest of the magicals advanced, pushing outwards, closer and closer to their objective.

As the advancers' fire faded away, they left only some occasional teams to harass the defenders. When things started to relax a little, people started talking again - mainly about the situation they found themselves in. They had not been allowed to talk during the impromptu imprisonment in the so-called "Safe Camp" bullshit.

Eventually, the colonists were brave enough to question their apparent liberators. One man, in particular, broke the language barrier by questioning Lillian. In Mandarin, because Mandarin was the most common tongue on Shanxi, the man asked, "Who are you? You don't look like any Alliance I've seen."

Lillian smiled, allowing some of her calming, pacifying abilities to flare slightly so as not to have anyone become alarmed. "I'm sorry, but I cannot tell you exactly _who_ we are. What I can tell you is that we are not Alliance.

"I am Corporal Withers, that lovely lady over there holding the alien rifle is Private Sanders, and also the reason why the aliens' heads exploded. The man with the scraggly beard is Sergeant Volkov," Lillian had gained herself a rude gesture for her description, which made most paying attention to chuckle along with her. "And finally, we have the cold bastard over there named Left Tennant Blake, our medical officer." Said man only gave a single nod to the population.

When another, significantly smaller, unit of the bluebirds started another harassment mission, the group efficiently cut them down with the piercing power of the Reducto setting.

Over the alien rifle's noise, Lillian heard a faint "Wow," from the crowd. It appeared that they didn't notice the drastic difference in weapon designs until then.

* * *

As the ground war was slowly becoming more and more to the MSS's favour, so too were they slowly gaining air superiority. Dragon riders took to the skies to harass both air and land targets with their very sharp talons, extremely hot dragon breath, and mixed with a fair amount of spellfire from the riders themselves.

However impressive the air units were, they were nothing compared to the firepower the stealth starships provided against the previously unaware alien ships.

For only a moment was there a cease-fire, wherein the leader of the mundane military had been in the process of surrendering, before Harry's order came through. The first and second fleets were present in the Shanxi system as they started the attack, while others were either preparing to depart for the battle or were busy reinforcing other places.

After a while of the bluebirds' ships blowing up left, right, and centre, they began to panic a little. Their panic was made evident by the way they seemed to stop targeting and instead fire randomly every which way. Well, those that weren't taking their anger out on the System's Alliance that re-started the firing between the two Harry thought that it would end up like the whole drama about Han from his youth, between which side fired the first shot.

Rather surprisingly the race of avian creatures did not begin to retreat to the Relay, even though they were obviously out of their league. Harry had expected them to make a tactical retreat, all the while setting traps as they went.

As the enemy force dwindles, Harry's forces began further intel gathering missions. One such method of intel gathering was collecting the enemy tech for investigation. A more risky mission was to board the enemy ship to retrieve some vital intel. Intel like maps, and star charts.

Harry had decided not to risk his men on such a mission and instead had boarded the ship himself. He had been able to stealth through the ship, having been able to skilfully apparate from the flagship to the closest vessel. He had made liberal use of either low powered spells or passive magics so as not to interfere with the delicate nature of technology.

Just when Harry had gotten what he needed, the ship he was on was hit _hard_ by the System's Alliance. He was jettisoned into space, and with a great deal of effort was able to apparate himself to his flagship's empty med bay. He was then treated to the "merciful" aid of the ship's chief medical officer, Lilly Potter.

Harry's youngest was less-than-pleased with his sometimes reckless behaviour, and displayed it quite well in his treatment of his gained wounds and exposure to the vacuum.

* * *

 **A/N: So the magical military joined the First Contact War! Now, I think the next chapter might be more of the Contact was** _ **and**_ **the peace conference after, but it might get too long to get it all in.**

 **As always, I hope that you all enjoyed the chapter, and please let me know what you thought of it in the form of a review.**


	5. Chapter 4: Playing Fair

**Chapter 4: Playing Fair**

* * *

When the aliens - identified as turians by the translators working on the collected records of the enemy ships - had all been wiped out of the immediate system, analysts went to work overtime picking apart the different technologies to learn about them more. The highest priority of which was what Harry took from the ship he boarded.

The news was enlightening. It painted a picture of the most powerful factions, as well as the "no man's land" in the galaxy. Most importantly, however, was the turians' placement of their colonies. In but a moment, Harry and the various higher ups planned an invasion and embargo of the colonial systems. The information taken from the raid was integrated seamlessly into the plans they had originally drafted for a possible space-to-land invasion, with little corrections made to fine-tune it. Despite their plans, they would not actually invade the turian planets.

When the various admirals had their assignments, and all were ready, the signal was given for them to start. They engaged their port-trans dives, or PTDs, in order to get there quickly.

The embargo was the first to go up, and ships that were coming or going from the relay were only spared a warning shot. If they did not go back to where they were from or showed any hostile intent like engaging their weapons systems, they were summarily destroyed. The only thing they allowed through was information in the form of signals reaching the Relay.

Harry wanted everyone to know what was happening. Freedom of the press, and all that.

Throughout the entire war, people like Harry were taking a critical eye to the methods that the turians used, and what it said about their psychology. Eventually, it was deduced that they fought like the Japanese from world war two, and as such, it would take a similar method to make them surrender. From the hacked data banks taken from various raids on the planet Shanxi, and through some linguistics experts on the job, the magical sapience society's military was able to learn some basic things, mainly taken from the turians' military-grade codexes.

That allowed them to not only know where everything was but also what it was used for.

That was why Harry's ship was carrying him to the Citadel, where he knew the humans were going to be due to a recent intervention of the council.

The council was comprised of three interesting species. First were the asari, a blue feminine looking people with an ability to use biotics, something similar to magic, but oh-so-much-more limited.

Biotics used Element Zero, or eezo for short, the same element that the humans used to achieve FTL travel. They could affect gravitational, and rarely electromagnetic fields. It was very limited compared to magic.

The asari were mono-gender and were able to mate with any species as they connected to the nervous system, and used only the most relevant genetic material. This process also allowed for the sharing of minds, which was concerning for security reasons. It would have to be tested whether or not the standard occlumency training could prevent it. The asari were also interesting for their lifespans - they lived a modest one thousand years.

The turians were next, those that they were fighting.

The third race to have a seat on the council - the largest faction in the galaxy - were the salarians. The salarians were an amphibious looking race, with a very short lifespan of about forty to fifty years. However short their lives may have been, they more than made up for it in their intelligence.

If Harry were to categorise them into his old Hogwarts houses, he would place the salarians as Ravenclaws, the asari as seventy percent Slytherin, and thirty percent Hufflepuff. The turians would be mainly Gryffindor with a slight touch of Slytherin tactics in their military training and politics.

* * *

The human race had been surprised by the intervention of the council. However, the magicals were not all that surprised, at least, those with the proper clearance to read in on what they found out in the codices they'd found.

When the council offered to mediate the dispute, the humans agreed to co-operate, seeing as they were a mostly neutral party. The magicals were offered to board the Alliance vessel to reach the citadel as well because of those "in the know" thought them unable to get through the Relays, and thus follow the council ships through to neutral territory. Harry and Hannah refused, stating that they'd manage.

That was to say, they managed to beat them there.

Harry's ship listed lazily to their target the citadel. When he saw the station, it made his skin crawl, like it was a bad omen; he thought something so beautiful had to be hiding something. Perhaps it was just his personal past clouding his judgement, but amongst magicals, there goes a saying, "Veela hide their inner fury through beauty."

Harry preferred "Fool's paradise," but each to their own, he supposed.

When the Alliance and Council vessels had come close enough, Harry's personal ship The Sleeping Dragon had de-cloaked and hailed the Alliance frigate Spielberg. Harry honestly did not want to ask how the lab crumple-horned snorkacks - Luna had laughed heartily when she heard the term for the people of her department - had come up with a way for communication between a fully magical vessel and a non-magical vessel. He was quite sure the answer would leave him both more confused, and with a headache.

Not that he wasn't an intellectual, oh no, it was just that there was a reason why he stayed far away from technomancy. He both felt that only insane people with a slight fetish for explosions belonged there, and he wanted to keep all of his limbs intact.

Then again, he did work as a military official and had his fair share of assassination attempts. Upon that short self-reflection, Harry concluded that he couldn't really judge.

Either way, it mattered little in the face of the sound of crackling magic signalling the successful handshake encryption being accepted.

Apparently, the mundane leader was already speaking to the council's ship at the time and had figured that he might as well bring him into the conversation.

It was President Sanders himself that had been conversing, and he decided that introductions were in order, "Captain Holben of the SNV Behon, this is the commander-in-chief of the _other_ race that the turians managed to anger, Executor Potter. Harry, this is Captain Holben, the person that was to escort us to the neutral territory for negotiations. I see you've made it here somehow." The last part he had mumbled to himself, only just managing to keep the slight awe and annoyance he felt from showing.

The captain looked intrigued by this information, and it showed in the way he spoke, "Another species? Was only informed of two species involvement. This changes things. Council needs to be informed." By that point, the intelligent being turned to a device on his wrist and his digits began flying across a holographic projection. All the while, he continued talking, "You are cleared for docking, follow this vessel to landing pads.

The docking itself went without much fanfare, except for when Harry chose to land his craft on the same platform as the human ship. People were rather amused that the ship carrying the leaders of a society could fit on the same landing pad as the human frigate.

Well, until more people than could logically fit in the allotted space exited the ship.

If there was one thing Harry loved, it was when people didn't even _attempt_ to harm people he cared for. A good way to ensure that was to make it look like they posed too much a risk to take on. Thus, Harry revealed the shocked and confused looks they received when Minny and Tiny came out of the ship.

The group, composed of the armed escorts, as well as the escorted, met up at a junction connecting a great many paths to ship docks. They then made their way to the Presidium Tower, but more specifically the seats of power of the council races. It did not take long, especially as they passed security fairly quickly through the liberal use of diplomatic immunities, and people tended to stay out of the way of a formidable looking group such as themselves.

Their trip included an elevator ride of an intermittent length of time, during which Harry was thoroughly uncomfortable, only distracted by an animated debate about quidditch with Hannah.

Their conversation brought either poorly suppressed amused expressions from the magically inclined, or curiosity from the rest that weren't.

Eventually, the group made it to the council chambers whereupon there was a conference table set up not unlike what would have been in humanity's mediations in courts.

The asari councillor, Tevos, a rather councillor said, "That will be all," to the salarian guardsmen. The captain nodded and gestured for his men to follow him out. Without much thought, the rest of them arranged themselves in an order that spoke of both who was in charge on their side of the short war, as well as the best possible protection of the members.

Harry sat with Hannah on his right, and his second on his left. The Systems Alliance President sat with Hannah on his left, with his Grand Admiral to his right, followed by Admiral Williams, the man in charge during most of the incident at Shanxi.

Behind Harry, and off to the side, his giant - literally, as they _were_ giants - bodyguards stood, protecting the three prominent members from being stabbed in the back. The Alliance's guards looked like children standing next to a parent as they took similar positions behind the Alliance's chairs.

Up until the moment they all sat down, they had seemingly ignored the presence of the other side of the short war, the turians' delegates.

The previous cheery atmosphere was broken by the clearing of a throat; it was a gesture that was apparently a universal distinction of trying to gain attention. Well, for those that _had_ throats to need clearing; the hanar did not have throats. There were floating camera drones active throughout the room, as the humans had requested for the proceedings to be made public upon the advice of their magical allies. The council had seen no harm in it. In fact, they had liked the idea as a means of introducing a new species to the rest of civilised space.

"Shall we begin?" The general consensus was in the affirmative, so the asari councillor continued. "For a start, we will begin with introductions. We will begin with the turian representatives and work our way around. Please state your name, rank, and why you are here please." The blue alien mono-gender nodded for the turian members to start.

"I am Patriarch Palidime, the current ruler of the Turian Hierarchy, here for the peace negotiations in favour of my people. Beside me is Admiral Vakarian, for the required military presence. To his left is the Fleet Commodore of the Twenty-First fleet, the fleet involved in the Relay Three Fourteen incident, Commodore Calplicus. To my right is my legal advisor Barbabia Optigius." The Patriarch then nodded for the turian counsellor to continue.

"I am Councillor Vartion, the turian counsillor, and I'm here as a witness and advisor," The avian man said.

"As we all should know by now, I am councillor Tevos, the asari representative on the council, and here to act as a mediator for the negotiations."

Next was the salarian councillor, "I am Councillor Maelse. Here as witness, and advisor." With his curt sentences finished, the salarian motioned for the human side to continue.

Because he had motioned to the Systems Alliance's president, he spoke first, "I am President Sanders, the head of state and commander-in-chief ofthe the Human Systems Alliance. To my right is Grand Admiral Miyagi, and to his right is the one in charge of the human side of the First Contact War, as he was cut off from the rest of the command chain, Admiral Williams. I am here on behalf of the Systems Alliance, and they are here as the military representatives, and witness of the event, respectively." The president stopped there, however, and instead motioned for Hannah to continue. It surprised most that were watching, as that meant she was one of the heads. The proper protocol for the introductions was that those that were figureheads got to introduce themselves, and those that were noteworthy but not heads were introduced by a head.

Hannah spoke, "I am Prime Minister Longbottom..." Hannah had chosen to keep Nevill's last name after she was widowed, "... I am the Head of State of the Magical Sapience Society, and I am here on behalf of the MSS for the political side of things." Then, Hannah fluidly passed the torch to Harry.

He accepted, "I am the Commander-in-chief of the Magical Sapience Society's Military, Executor Potter. I am here on behalf of the MSSM. Beside me is one of my seconds, Grand Admiral Styx. he is here as an advisor and witness of the events of the First Contact War's start."

From that point onward, the negotiations truly got started, first by going over the Systems Alliance and the Turian Hierarchy's interactions. It was a long process of bickering back and forth of who did what. The patriarch's stipulation of having the humans as a client race was immediately shot down by the Systems Alliance.

In the end, the Turian Hierarchy had to pay a fair amount of reparations to the Systems Alliance for attacking without warning or explanation. The Systems Alliance also became a part of the citadel races and was limited to the same number of military presence as the turians in the new Treaty of Fairfax.

However, that was only the Systems Alliance's side of the war. In no way was the MSS involved, and the more magically inclined had been patiently waiting for them to come to a decision. This, of course, took a few days to accomplish with many breaks throughout.

Finally, it was MSS's turn to enter proper negotiations with the Turian Hierarchy. Their negotiations took substantially less time, mainly because Harry and Hannah had figuratively backed them into a corner.

It started with President Sanders mentioning jauntily that it was the MSS's turn to negotiate, following the signing of the Treaty of Fairfax. So, the gruelling process of negotiating began again, but this time for what the magicals wanted. However, it got very interesting when the turians found the clause about them becoming a vassal of the MSS.

* * *

"No." He said after a long period in which the patriarch had been chuckling, all the while the various MSS representatives had been patiently waiting with rather serious expressions. "You can't be serious," The man continued, but still the magically inclined remained silent, as did the expression remain on their faces. "No!" the alien repeated again. Harry and Hannah shared a look, only for Hannah to get a smirk upon her aged, lined face and gestured for Harry to lead on. Harry sighed for having lost the brief mental argument, and his hopes of staying silent the entire time having been crushed.

Harry spoke, "Perhaps you do not fully understand the position you are in, so let me enlighten you. If you do not agree to our plans, we will glass Palaven for what you did to our colony."

"You colony?! We did nothing to any of your colonies, we only attacked the human because they were illegally tampering with a Relay, and then destroyed out ships because of said attack, leading to the occupation of one of _their_ colonies!" It was obvious the patriarch was angry from what was being insinuated: that turians were bloodthirsty warmongers.

"That's rather asinine of you to assume that it was indeed a purely human colony, when in fact, it isn't. That colonial world is owned by the MSS. There are, in fact, a few human colonies, but it is mostly magister colonies on the world as we found and colonised the planet _long_ before the humans got there. They had to ask permission to have a colony set up on Shanxi.

"Normally your occupation of the planet would not be angering, however insulting it was of you to just assume the nearby planet was at fault for your downed ships.

"But that's only in normal circumstances, as it made sense. However, your military had the audacity to do a few other things. You had started rounding up the civilians of the planet, and placing them in 'safe camps'. Normally, this would also make sense, as you would want to keep as little amount of civvies in a hot zone to a minimum, but that wasn't all you did. You killed anyone that resisted - even slightly - of going to the camps. However, your motives were even darker, as when it appeared that the Systems Alliance was winning with their better tactics and overall strategy, you threatened to kill them all.

"I fully believe you would have done it, too.

"Still, the fact that you stooped to the level of criminal tactics was not what truly angered us. It was dishonourable and disgusting, but not provoking in and of itself for us to step in. No, what truly got the MSSM involved was that _our_ citizens - many a civilian where they had chosen to go peaceably into the safe camps, mainly mundane parents with magical dependencies or those that prefer the mundane life and did not wish to fight in risk of themselves and their property further - were in those groups, too.

"Essentially those that were in no way combatants, but our citizens, were threatened to be executed by your military.

"It was insulting that thought them human because of our similar looks, and it was what finally brought us into the war, despite the Alliance not asking for any aid, but it was not the only thing that made us go to war.

"There exists, or at least _existed_ a temple on Shanxi that my people created without abilities. It was a place in which our people used for various purposes, and it had some light defences as opposed to what was supposed to be rather heavy defences. They had fallen easily due to poor maintenance and negligent attitudes of certain companies, to which they will be fined for their part of what I'm about to elaborate on.

"One of you Generals named Desolas Arterius had hired a human mercenary named Jack Harper. He had been investigating the area and discovered one of many of its rather weakened defences. He had then got it in his head to conduct experiments on his own soldiers by introducing them to the area and a certainly _stolen_ artefact that turned them into mindless husks.

"Eventually, he had deemed the project too risky shortly after it started and ordered for the temple's destruction as well as each and every one of his test subjects. However, the methods by which he conducted the detonation reacted poorly with the objects within it, and had led to the deaths of one hundred thousand or so magister civvies, not to mention actual combatants and non-magical civvies."

"What does any of that have to do with turning the Turian Hierarchy into you client race?" Councillor Maelse asked curiously.

Harry continued with, "Well, the last time the MSS suffered an invasion by an attacking force similar to the Turian Hierarchy, we had ended up annexing their country. In this case, it was determined that it simply is not worth it to fully annexe, which is standard procedure for this sort of thing, and instead, it was decided to be forgiving and simply puppet their government."

"We will not surrender to you!" The patriarch snarled, with his various compatriots vocalising their agreement.

The turian councillor did not say a word, too shocked was he at what was being said. The asari councillor had decided to add some form of advice for the young looking man, "I would advise you to change what you wish out of this negotiation, as this looks a lot like surrender, and turians do not surrender because of their rigid military discipline."

Harry nodded sadly, and the turian patriarch started to do the equivalent of a smirk of their species. Then Harry replied with, "I feared you all would say something like that, and so the MSSM had prepared something for this event."

Harry began to fuss over a few trinkets he had brought, all the while his second began to take up speaking. In his eerily calm tones, Frank spoke, "It has been decided that because the Turian Hierarchy had been far too similar to the Rising Sun of humanity's history, similar methods had to be used to ensure their surrender and re-education.

"It had also been deemed acceptable to be used as your military had not been differentiating between civilian and military targets for a victory, and turnabout is indeed fair play."

Once Harry was finished tinkering with the various trinkets before him, he had taken out a small pocket mirror, had let his breath fog the glass, and called for the correct link. He was treated to the sight of the correct person on the other end, in that case, a centaur named Foley. In Spanish, a language that had not yet been translated for an Omni tool's use, Harry spoke to the mirror, "Operation Manhattan is a go for designation Hiroshima, authorisation code: forty-four, seven, five, Pantalone, Atlantis, Severus, Severus, six, twenty-two, Isis, Veles, Enki."

A reply was heard by all in the form of a crisp London accent, "Secon authorization required." Harry passed the linked mirror to his second.

Grand Admiral Frank Styx said, in Latin, "Second Authorisation code: one, two, forty-four, Severus, Enki, Circe, Circe, Odin, Nym, Diana, three, Enki, Diana." Before themall, projected into the hollowed space of the u-shaped table, an image sprung to life. It was in full colour, almost as if it were truly there, and Frank continued to speak, counting down from ten to zero in a slow measured fashion.

Harry spoke for the sake of everyone knowing what they were about to witness, "This is a live image of Palaven, the turian homeworld, and its current state of being embargoed." A moment after Harry's explanation, his second reached zero, and the blue-green planet with sparkling lights on the dark side had then had a fiery ball shot towards it. From their view, it was relatively easy for them to see the fiery ball plummet closer to the surface of the night side. Then, it started spreading. Rapidly it spread. In but a moment the entire planet looked to be an imitation of an orange-white star.

Those in the room looked shocked and horrified, with a great deal of denial. Such was the case for the turian councillor, "Lies!" He shouted, "This cannot be! You just manufactured this hologram to scare us into signing!"

"You should ask your salarian colleague for confirmation, I know for a fact that he has an STG in most of the systems you have colonised," Harry suggested.

Everyone turned to the mentioned councillor, and in a shaky voice he said, "I can confirm."

Harry started to talk again, "If you do not surrender, every hour that passes, we will set aflame another colonial planet."

* * *

One hour passed and one more colony was set aflame before the Turian Hierarchy surrendered for the first time in its known history.

On live television, they signed the treaty announcing their vassalisation to the MSS, a society that had not been known of by even the majority of the humans, a race that had shared a homeworld with them, until that point.

The galaxy was shocked again shortly after that, however, when the very effective illusions cast on the two turian colonial worlds were lifted. Harry smiled kindly to the rather shocked, defeated, and lost looking turians that had gained his respect by signing the treaty with a great deal of dignity left. Harry said to the patriarch, "My boy, I am not so heartless as to blame an entire species for the wrongdoings of their government. However, make no mistake: it would have been easier to do it for real than it would be to create an illusion."

* * *

 **A/N: So that was a chapter that was a lot longer than my average. Yet, I still hadn't put everything in there that I wanted in there, like better explanations on why everyone there could understand each other, but not when Harry and Frank spoke into the linked mirror, or why the station didn't explode when the magic powering the holograms went online.**

 **Well, it will be interesting to put in later.**

 **Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this rather long (for me) chapter, and please let me know what you thought of it in the form of a review before you go.**


	6. Chapter 5: Enjoyment

**A/N: For those of you that had missed it, that was my version of the magical phonetic alphabet used to do the codes. Now, I had spelt** **out "passive" for the first part, which was a foreshadowing point in that chapter.**

 **For those that had pointed out some plot holes in the last chapter, I thank you. I hope this chapter answered some of your questions and filled those holes.**

* * *

 **Chapter 5: Enjoyment**

Urdnot Wrex was a krogan and an exceptionally old one at that. He was also a mercenary, one whose services could be purchased for a variety of things from protection to less legal matters.

That was the reason why he was off of his homeworld Tuchanka, he was on the job. He had taken his mark in for his pay, bloodied and bruised, and had done what he always did after a successful hunt. He found a bar. He was on his second glass of ryncol when a rather flustered asari had come out of the back just having deactivated her omi tool before shouting to the nearesbyt bartender, "You've got to see this. It's unbelievable!" The words were followed by the action of changing what was being played on the vid screen to show the familiar - despite never being there - sight of the council chambers.

It was on one of the news networks that had a constant broadcast throughout council space, and also one that the krogan people did not bother watching, other than the women. For some strange reason, they thought it was a good idea to watch the various races air their lies. The bar was treated to the end of a sentence, "... leading to the occupation of _their_ colonies!" It was the turian patriarch that had spoken, and the only reason why Wrex knew this was the penchant for displaying the name of a speaker that news outlets tended to do. What struck Wrex as odd was that the turian was angry - normally through the rigid military structure the turians subjected themselves to they had a great control over their emotions.

It was then that a comparatively small, pink thing had started speaking in return, with the name again clearly noted on screen. Despite the fact that Wrex was only paying half of his attentions to what was going on in the council chambers, he was probably noticing meanings behind things said than the average person - unless they are a salarian. Through Wrex's experience in his long life, mixed with his extraordinary sight compared to the next species, he picked up things that would normally be missed.

That being said, Wrex knew what the small pink thing was doing by his words; he was showing to the galaxy that the turians were nothing but bloodthirsty, warmongering extremists that were not above criminal tactics. They made them look worse than the krogan, and that made Wrex both amused and pay closer attention to the vid and less attention to the looks he was receiving. It was possible that they were just trying to discern what the krogan of the room though of this, but it was also likely that they were out to get him with the rap sheet he had rung up.

When the small squishy being had mentioned one of the turians' own generals had been experimenting on their own soldiers, it took people for a loop, especially the part where the general supposedly hired one of the human mercs. Quiet discussion had then broken out about that ficlet of information, but Wrex would not put it past the turians to attempt it.

Normally when someone was trying to subjugate a population, it would not make any sense to hire one of them. However, the turians had a history of doing that exact same thing. When they were trying to subjugate the krogans, they were still using them as cannon fodder during the rachni wars. That, and it would make some sense from a tactical standpoint to hire someone of the other side as an informant into the inner workings of a particular species. From what Wrex understood of the battle, the turians were only winning for a short time during the war, and for most of it, they were losing. It would make sense that they would be desperate enough to hire someone they were subjugating with false promises of payment - like what they did to the proud krogan people - and result to criminal tactics of taking hostages if they were losing a war.

It would, after all, have been a very big embarrassment to the Turian Hierarchy if they lost a war against a seemingly ignorant, new race, especially as the turians were allowed to have the most ships according to the old Treaty of Farixen. Not that that mattered anymore, as according to the new Treaty of Fairfax, they were limited to equal shares of the new human race and turian race. It would be interesting to see where the other, similarly small and pink beings would fit.

Apparently nowhere, as they had demanded the turians to be a client race of them. The krogan grinned viciously, it appeared that the asarioid being had a rather large hump to demand such a thing.

Eventually, through some byplay between the being and his second in which they galaxy was treated to the sounds of two distinctly different languages that were both not translated by their omnitools and that had a very pleasant sound even if they did not understand the meanings of the sounds, the camera drone that had been providing the closeup shot switched to an angle where Wrex could see the entire room.

He decided he needed to take the "small" part back, as situated behind the heads of the new species were obvious bodyguards. Wrex had seen his fair share of them and had been them enough to know what they looked like. They looked nearly taller than Wrex himself, taken from the assumption that the standing asari spectre part of the council protection detail in the room was of average height, and thus used as a scale for Wrex to go by. They were fitted with the same general uniform design that the previous speaker wore. They stood with the discipline of any military Wrex had seen that was not krogan and in an alert, ready stance. Just from looking at them, Wrex instinctively knew that they would be rather _fun_ to take down.

However, what really struck Wrex was that one of them was obviously female, and he couldn't help but be the smallest but attracted to that woman as his entire basic culture was to seek out power. The woman screamed power and confidence with the way she carried herself in that moment.

During the time that Wrex was checking out the woman, he had missed the crucial part where the new hologram in the centre of the room had been set aflame. However, he did not miss the next part. He particularly enjoyed the tantrum supplied by the turians for the glassing of their planet. It served them right for all that they have done to the krogan and even salarian races. It was about time someone had stuck it to them. The camera had snapped to the salarian councillor for confirmation of what they were witnessing was indeed not fabricated.

What most do not realise about the way communication worked in the galaxy was the limited bandwidth available for the very high demand the galaxy had. Because of this limit in bandwidth, some organisations had a higher priority over others, the highest of which was anything the council did over the network. Also, because of the way the data was transmitted, it allowed for messages with the right priority key near-instant queries across council space.

This was very important for when the camera drone owned by the news outlet Wrex was watching focused on the salarian councillor to see their very pale face, waiting on the confirmation.

Wrex was surprised when the magister - so says the news outlet identified him as - proposed the salarian to confirm. It was a very open secret throughout the species "in the know" that the salarian government normally kept a Special Tasks Group in each of the systems, especially the more important parts. An STG team was normally made up of a small team of a handful of salaries with a speciality in a certain field, with an additive of being capable of combat. They were quite annoying in Wrex's opinion as they hindered some of his efforts. Thankfully, they were more often than not just in an "observe and report" state and did not make the fatal mistake of trying to actually go into combat with a krogan battle master such as he. However, Wrex was surprised that the very new species was able to find that ficlet of information despite having been on the citadel for a few days. Even more troubling for him was that they were able to discern that there were STG teams around Palaven especially since the salarians were known to have the best cloaking technology available, only rivalled by the little heard of Geth's abilities.

It had been a very long time since Wrex had seen anything of the Geth; they mostly stayed hidden behind the Perseus Veil.

However troubling this "magister" race was with the more information Wrex was able to pick up on, even if it was subconscious, he thought it would help him in his line of work to know as much as possible about them like he did the other races.

In fact, Wrex's point of view of alien races was mainly centred around how he could take 'em down and how many credits he could make off of them. Not that Wrex had the passive introspection to realise it at that point.

Wrex's grin widened when the salarian had given the confirmation the majority of the galaxy had been waiting on. Around him, the patrons of the bar had exclaimed in surprise and disbelief through one method or another, and quite a few of the turians had chosen to express their in the similar fashion as those on the vid screen. However, it was not just the turians that had burst into tears or became livid beyond most things. There were other races upon Palaven than just turians, and whether they were just visitors or held a permanent residence there was a wide variety.

In fact, by the way some of the patrons reacted, some of their family had been there.

Through the next hour, upon which the news had cut away to show some reactions and to get some more story of what different officials thought while the turians privately discussed their options. Wrex was interested to see whether or not the turians would actually surrender, as they were known for their resolve to never surrender. He had even found himself continuing to watch the video for entertainment in hearing a _debate, of all things,_ on whether or not the turians would surrender, but more so on how many colonies it would take for them to surrender.

After the hour passed, the feed cut back to the council chambers where there was still the burning planet as a reminder of what happened. Then, another colonial planet was shown next to the fireball, and when the clearly displayed countdown reached zero, true to their word, the planet was set aflame just as the last had.

It was then that the primarch had surrendered to the magisters. It was a surreal experience for those that were watching the feeds, and the bartender, a matriarch no less, had commented on the feeling. She had noted how it was strange for her to witness so much in her time, so much history, even that historical event when the unyielding yield.

Normally krogan culture would forbid something similar to what the magisters had done, the act of stabbing someone in the back was the height of cowardice, and this _event_ was just that: stabbing the turians in the back by not facing them directly. However, there were a few exceptions to this rule; when dealing with pests and cowards. In either case of an exception, they didn't deserve the respect required to face them head on. Take a Thresher Maw compared to the rachni.

A thresher maw was a prideful, strong creature that would not hesitate to strike down any foe that encroached on their territory. They were ruthless and efficient in their defence of the nest, as well as ferocious in the acquiring of new territory. They were beautiful creatures with the way they fought, with the way they naturally identified the strongest threat to deal with first, and then would mop up the rest. There was a reason they were a part of the rite, and why there was so much prestige with being able to take one down, after-all.

The rachni, on the other hand, were more pests than anything. They would use graceless hoarding waves to overrun a population. They would steal any and all supplies a planet had before using those resources solely to make _more_ to take _more_. They had no sympathy, they held no quarter, any they used all the underhanded tactics like stabbing someone in the back, and cowardly betrail.

It should be able to go without mention that the krogans thought the Turian Hierarchy as a whole was riddled with cowardice for how they handled the great krogan rebellions, and Wrex thought that the newest race, the magisters, just thought the turians as pests with the way they dealt with them; the magisters acted like wizened battle masters setting an unruly hatchling in their place.

Wrex almost winced at the memory of how his sire had dealt with him at that age; he may have been a battle master and old enough to give up on keeping track of his age, but the finer points of his youth were still _memorable_. He was sure his old friend Okeer would agree.

Then, there was the whole moment where it was revealed to be an illusion, and that the magisters had simply made the entirety of galactic society _think_ that the planets were lost. Wrex had outright laughed when it was discovered.

It was at that moment that Urdnot Wrex, a krogan battle master so old he had forgotten his own age, fully clued into what the magisters had done and what it meant.

* * *

Some might find it entirely too quick the way that the magicals had advanced. They had gone from the archaic, medieval thinking, not two hundred years before they entered into a galactic community. They would normally be right about that, too. However, it should be noted that the magisters had two significant advantages over a naturally developing society.

First, the MSS had an added benefit of developing beside a rapidly advancing species who in turn had eventually been leeching off a previous technologically advanced species. Granted, the technology did not transfer directly as magic tended to get rather territorial and predatory so it _ate_ \- for lack of a better word - electromagnetic influence. Mix that with its chaotic and temperamental nature and it was to the point where pretty much the only thing that was transferable were the ideas.

Thankfully, that was enough.

The second thing was the time available to the species as a whole; it was seen as very advantageous for the MSS to release time-related magics to the general public. That was after they had studied time magics extensively, of course. There were laws and safety measures taken to make sure the time magics were not abused, nor any employees mistreated too, to make sure the populace was protected and the general public had the correct training.

The release of time magic's lead to a few additions to general vocabulary in relation to time, wherein a standard year would be an unaffected year for an individual, a person that experiences two years within the span of a standard year would be a double year, a three compressed years would be a triple year, and so on. The same methods were able to be scaled down too, for something as small as a triple second. There were other words to describe the different time magics from looping, subjective, to active.

Thankfully, whatever the case may be, the preservation of the physical age of an individual was always carefully preserved. Apparently, it wouldn't do for the inventors of the magics to age too quickly.

With the threat of mind-shattering and relatively small reality altering a very real issue there arose a demand for speciality fields and general jobs where people were dedicated to time-related issues. So, there were dedicated mind healers to the treatment of shattered minds, temporal divisions to take cases involving certain paradox cleanups, and the rest of all that went into the issues of dealing with a society that rejected the linear time theory.

* * *

 **A/N: I decided to throw in what I think Wrex would have taken from the events, and what equally racist people would have thought about the whole turian/human/magister war.**

 **Hopefully,** **you all liked the chapter, and please do tell me what you think in the review section. I know that the issue regarding why Harry et. all had not simply** _ **imperiused**_ **the turian primarch to sign the contract, rather than essentially blackmailing them to doing it. It will be addressed in the next chapter.**

 **Or, if you were observant, you would already know why Harry had chosen to negotiate the way he did.**


	7. Chapter 6: Milestones

**Chapter 6: Milestones**

* * *

Despite what he had been told when he was only a lowly fourteen years old, magical contracts were fairly fickle things. They tended not to take hold if the contract detected any sign that a participant was forced into the contract. An example of this was when Harry had been entered into the Triwizard Tournament without his consent, he did not have to compete as the magic determined the contract unworthy to be enforced by itself, magic having detected the forgery. However, if one of the parties were _tricked_ into the contract, that was an entirely different matter. If the person was of sound mind and was considered capable of being responsible for whatever they were singing on the behalf of, then it was only a matter of it needing to know better.

All of this applied to what the Magical Sapience Society had done to the Turian Hierarchy. The crafty man that he was, Harry had devised a plan with Hannah to come take the Turian Hierarchy over with a less-than-hostile takeover, unlike the previous states that they had. However, the only way to annexe a sovereign state without forcing the government to capitulate as well as occupying the land was through the head of states' signing over the control. For the contract to be accepted and enforced on more than a legal scale, magic had to have determined that there was no foul play; for magic, making an illusion of an attack was not considered foul play as the person had still signed upon their own free will; it also didn't consider the situation as under duress, as they had lost that right of how they had treated the humans' surrender. If the other signature was not placed through the proper person's own free will or was not placed by the proper person at all, then the contract that was being called upon to be enforced by magic would not hold. In fact, if it was the right situations, it could be seen that magic would take offence and create a sort of backlash.

Now, when the client contract had been drawn up by the MSS, they had been very meticulous in both their intent and the wording of the contract so as to make it inconspicuous to the turians. In that case, it was very important as to who signed the contract, and how they signed it. As it was, the turians' head of state had signed on behalf of not their government, as was expected to sign over control of the governing body, but as the head of the _species_. He had, inadvertently, enforced the contents of the contract on his entire species as the governing body _did_ represent the species as a whole. It meant that the entire turian race _had_ to adhere to the legally, _magically_ binding contract, and thus would be unable to go against the spirit of the MSS' laws, even outside of their jurisdiction.

All over the galaxy, turians that had gone against the Concordia's basic Commandments had collapsed and died a _very_ painful death due to breaking a magical oath. Namely, the worst the galaxy had to offer: slavers, rapists, etc.. The rest of the offenders were warned, in varying ways.

It might not have been part of the plan for Harry et al to get turian to sign in the way he did, but it was a pleasant surprise nonetheless. They had a small, pitiful chuckle at the foolishness of the warmonger, in private, of course. At least, those that were not bound to a neutrality pledge had chuckled.

* * *

It must be reiterated that the MSS regularly meddled with time magics, as did most of their society, and they've had access to it for _thousands_ of years. However, of all the different types of time magics, it was the branch of Divination that had been publicly practised. Yet, despite the publicity of Divination, no one had been able to get it as accurate and clear until the MSS. Through this clarity, the MSS had developed the use of early warning systems above and beyond anything that the mundanes could reliably come up with for the next few hundred millennia; at least, that was what the Seers proclaimed.

It was a sad fact that because of the nature of a Seer's work with time magics, that they could not partake in any other of the branches of time. It was like cross contamination, in a way, wherein the energies and signature of seeing into the future would end up shattering the mind of the would-be traveller by infecting their meaty heads. If they already "were" a traveller of time, the journey acted as a type of immunisation against the other energies thus preventing the act of connecting with the fourth dimension in the same way. They could understand collected and stored data, but they were not able to connect to magic in the same way. Hermione was not quite sure how to feel about that discovery, having been reminded of when she had used a time turner when they were heavily restricted.

Economically speaking, it placed any that would work or train in Divination at a disadvantage as the rest of the populace had the option of taking double, or even triple, the hours of a standard week. So, to make sure that the supply was not too much lower than the demand, the position paid triple.

As an addendum of the increased need, use, and standards in the art, the term "A Seer Intervention" was coined. A Seer Intervention was what happened when there was the release or leak of information, namely a closely kept secret, pertaining to a possible significant future, in order to halt that future from ever happening. Harry had, in fact, done this when he had publicly released that one Jack Harper had worked with the turians for pay.

Jack had not, in fact, done this quite yet. He had done it in the future possibility and had been Seen by one of Harry's analysts, and in this future, he had then gone on to write an entire racist manifesto leading to the creation of what would be known as Cerberus. The kindest any magical could say about the organisation was that their chosen name was an insult to the species, as they clearly guarded _nothing_. From publically announcing the man's name in colluding with alien species by a respectable position, Harry had snubbed the possibility of the man using racist ideals for his own goals.

It wouldn't stop them from paying _very_ close attention to the man, the man that would have in that future, been called The Illusive Man. When he heard the name, Harry had immediately had the thought "Tiny Tim" firmly planted in his mind. He would encourage any he came across to call anyone that referred to themselves as "The Illusive Man" as Tim.

* * *

It was generally accepted that as people aged, they changed naturally; people tended to have a different outlook on life than when they were younger. It was also well known in the transfiguration community that if someone has an animagus form, it manifests itself as the best animal that symbolises them. Now, when these two things were combined together, it gives some fairly complicated results. Even still, it got ever more complicated when the symbolism itself changed over time.

Previously, it was thought that it was impossible for someone to have multiple animagus transformations. However, as the person aged and their personality changed, logically their form should change as well, as it was supposed to represent them. Now, not only was this logic held true later in the year when _someone_ whom later went on to receive a Dalek Peace Prize, had tested this theory. It turned out that the primary form changed, and while the original form stayed, it took on average similar amounts of effort to gain the newer one as _another_ form.

This led to the ageing populace a significant advantage over any of the younglings. It led to a lot more respect for elders. Eventually, it became part of the culture enough so that it was recognised as very high status the more forms they had within not only the transfiguration society but also the greater human magister society.

Harry was one such person that was one of the leading animagi in the magical world mainly due to his affinity to transfiguration magics by being a metamorphmagus. Of course, due to the special nature of most of his forms, he was limited in what the public actually knew about his forms, so he was not able to claim the top spot.

Besides the special nature of most of his forms, he already had the standing self-enforced rule of not revealing anything about his own abilities until it was absolutely necessary or would be found out soon enough anyway; he was very much a Moody person.

That was why, after Harry had offered some consolation to his once-enemy and with the rest of the galaxy looking on, he had, collectively with the rest of the magisters in the room, had disapparated. The loud popping of displaced air had made many a person jump or raise their weapons in a readied state. The only one that had not reacted so violently were the Alliance's head of state and their bodyguards, them having had enough meetings with the magisters in their tenure that they were used to it.

The only reason why Harry had authorised the reveal of the ability was to place more stock into his claims, as it appeared to those that what they had done was use a technology vastly more superior than them, following the trend the MSS had set ever since they outed themselves.

As it was, the reason why the MSS had outed their existence to the Galactic community was that they thought themselves ready to defend themselves with the collective might of eighteen major races under one banner, with one government. At the time, it was also being debated in The Book Club weather or not to release the information about witches.

Just because the information about their existence was revealed did not mean the populace was allowed to break the statute of secrecy by practising magic publicly. All that changed was that the non-magisters knew of their existence. It was similar, Harry mused, to how a child knew that Santa Claus was real, as despite not ever seeing him, they had trust in those that told them so and they got presents. Only, the public was the child, while the very human looking folk that crushed the aliens was the present.

It also immensely amused Harry et al those in the know when people tried to chase after their colonies and instead had found themselves utterly unable. All but the citizens of the MSS and their vassals were not able to even look _near_ the areas that the MSS were at; to make matters more secure for the MSS, its citizens had to fill out an application and standard training in order to venture out of state for any reason. It was a deterrent from any sort of spotting of a magical person being captured, as unlikely as that would be. Based on the way the MSS had responded to the turians invading their colonial world, it was unlikely anyone would be likely to attempt the apparent suicide mission.

In fact, when the MSS had finally been able to connect to the greater extranet feeds of the galaxy, they had been all too happy to leak the actual feeds of _some_ of what happened. They were not foolish enough to release everything, as they needed to keep most of their fighting techniques to themselves, but it was enough to clearly show that they were not to be trifled with. In fact, Harry, Hermione and Hannah had been informed by the new heads of the subordinate turian government, that had been set up in replica of what the MSS was, save for the military operations, they had likened the prospect of fighting the MSS to trying to break a krogan female; it just was not done. This was, of course, after the turians had been fully integrated with the MSS as their puppet species.

Fleetingly, Harry wondered if the house elves had been entered into the state they were by way of a similar manner as the turians just with different wording.

* * *

It is well known that krogans have a right of passage, set out in an elaborate yet simplistic ritual that composed of the very basic parts that made a rite, a rite. First, there was the education through the way they were raised in a hard, competitive environment, the play fighting between krogan children allowed for them to learn how to do basic hand-to-hand combat. Then the prospectors had to be trained in krogan etiquette - though they did not name it as such - as well as all the rest of the values that the krogans held. Then, the krogan child was separated from the population with _his_ select few krantt and into the Rite. They were then to complete three separate trials where they were forced to fight for their life against waves of varying enemies. Throughout the entire thing, they were watched by the rest of the krogan clans as well as the shaman, but they did not see the rest of society judging their efforts. After their Rite and a successful survival of the majestic Thresher Maw, they were reintroduced to the general populace with a name. It must be noted that before they passed the Rite, the children had no stake in anything of the society, had no claim to a mate, or even a name as a part of a clan. If the Rite was failed, they were then treated as children still - they had not yet proven to the general population that they had it in them to function as an adult in the society, and were then forced to repeat the process over again.

Coincidentally, salarians were quite similar to the krogans in that they, too, had a Rite for their children to pass in order for them to be accepted into the greater society and have any chance of being of worth to even be considered. Salarians, interestingly enough, were not raised in the same familial unit that most of the other species in the known galaxy were, despite the fact that they took family very seriously, along with health. Instead of the "normal" family unit, salarians were raised communally wherein every coupling took care of the young together, where the young lived, learned, and played together. This grouping would stay with them for the rest of their lives with their fellow children as siblings and those that watched over them to be regarded as fond Aunts or Uncles. Though, it did not take long for the children to be eligible to become adults, as the age of full maturity for salarians was ten years of age; it was a fourth of their total average lifespan.

It wasn't all that odd either, as only krogans and asari did not subscribe to the rule of a quarter with a krogan's age of maturity being that of whenever a krogan passed the Rite, and the asari being that of an eighth of their total lifespan.

Before the salarians could be _fully_ considered an adult and worth considering, however, they had to pass their exams. Every prospecting adult, at the age of ten, is separated individually and tested on all that they have learned. They have to pass this painful, both physically and mentally, test in order to gain a name in society. Literally, as salarian children were not given names before the test took place, for fear of the high probability that they would die before reaching adulthood and earning the right to contribute to society. As for those that did not pass their right-of-passage, well, they were never missed; it was hard to track someone down without even knowing their _name_ , after all.

So with that in mind, it was understandable then that when the MSS had done a study of the salarian species, the general sentiment was utter horror. Even the krogans regarded their children with warmth and compassion. They disciplined their children, sure, but they never looked at them with a cold indifference that the salarians appeared to do. It simply was not within the salarian culture - that which is everything _learned_ \- to regard children as anything other than possessions, or items moving along an assembly line in a brain factory.

Having seen where they were coming from, it was no wonder that it was the salarian race that had manufactured something like the genophage, and not because of their famous abilities of intelligence.

The genophage was a weaponised _something_ (as the general populace had forgotten whether it was a short-lasting bioweapon that had lasting effects, or the result of chemical warfare) that resulted in an ongoing genocide of the krogan species. The genophage worked, in the simplest of terms, by limiting what would have been an available litter of one thousand babies per mother per year, to one successful hatching per mother per year.

However, instead of a contraceptive likened to that of sterilising the krogans, the genophage was significantly more morbid and malicious in nature. The genophage changed the very nature of the prospecting mother so that the mother's womb would actively try to kill her own child within said womb. This resulted in the stillbirth of nine-hundred and ninety-nine children every year, per mother. Still, though, the krogan race had tried to adapt after this travesty. Over time, the krogans had gone to a birth of one thousand per mother per year, to just under three thousand per mother per year so that they could sustain their own race; the harsh environments of the home-world made it so that they had a higher death rate than birth rate. Salarians had caught wind of this, and in their foolish arrogance had attempted - and succeeded - to alter the original genophage so that the krogans stayed "subdued".

What they had not taken into account was the krogans' environment. The environment was harsh, and that was putting it lightly, as not only was the world itself fraught with nuclear waste, but the maturation process they had to go through further limited their total population as time went on. That was only with the children, however, as most krogans tended to choose a life of danger in their potentially long life. The dangers of their positions and a noticeable lack of education and intelligence in the species led to many deaths in adulthood. Essentially, the salarians had not seen the error in keeping their actions, as the birth to death ratio was already imbalanced in death's favour.

Now, the salarians may have been the ones to create the genophage, but they were not the ones to implement it. That false honour laid in the hands of the turians. All of the above was the reason behind the very strong stigma against the salarians and turians on the krogans' part. That was why it was not uncommon for a krogan to outright refuse to _associate_ with anything that _associated_ with turians and/or salarians even though what had happened, had happened over nine hundred years ago; then again, the krogans' average lifespan was about one thousand years.

When the MSS had offered to aid the krogan people, their aid was rejected fairly politely with the excuse of, "Being too crafty for the krogans to trust the MSS." Rightfully so, considering how they were introduced to the greater galactic society.

* * *

Harry stood there, in mourning, as his youngest son was lowered into the ground during a proper burial. It was always hard, for any parent, to outlive their children. So much so was the difficulty that it was in the firm belief of most everyone that a parent should _never_ have to bury their child; it should always be the children to see their parents off into the afterlife.

It did not matter that the son was old enough to have become a child's great grandfather, as Harry had still outlived him.

It was also a rather sad fact that since the annulment of The Book Club doctrine, it was becoming an accepted fact that a mother will outlive their sons, or even grandsons, by a good couple dozen years. It was becoming the norm, and even though Harry and those of the older generations hated it, they were powerless to stop it. Thus, Harry stood there surrounded by the Potter clan he had sired, and they all watched in silence.

Harry considered the fact that he was currently in his original form, in public. He also considered that people would have already caught onto the fact that he was a metamorph what with the fact that he had managed to outlive his own children. After all, he was not a woman, so the only other option was being a metamorph.

While he stood in mourning over the recent death of his son, he was also in deep thought over all that he did day-in and day-out. He came to the conclusion that he was, as was so poetically stated before, "Too old for this shit."

Harry decided it was time to at least have himself a vacation, if not outright retire. He was thinking some nice plot of farmland to continue to work as his young body demands but still have that stress relief a retirement was supposed to provide.

* * *

 **A/N: I hope you all like the latest instalment of TPN. I know that this chapter isn't really action-oriented, and more of a filler, but I always thought it was best to remember that the filling is needed in order to make a delicious Boston Cream Donut.**

 **Or so I'm told, anyway. I never did like those messy things.**

 **Onto other news, I think that I'll have the next chapter about… I don't honestly know yet. Still working on that one, I am. Write like Yoda, I do. Wise, it always seems.**

 **So, take care! Please, do a review, as I always love reading them, even the ones that are hard to read.**


	8. Chapter 7: It's Not Paranoia

**Chapter 7: It's Not Paranoia...**

* * *

Harry had decided to retire. He had gone ahead and settled down on a rare solely magister garden-world colonial planet. It was supposed to be a nice, quiet, farming community on the planet of Mindoir that Harry was going to settle down as a lone farmer.

His main crop of choice were potatoes; he had to make the vodka from somewhere, anyway.

He had just finished a pass of ploughing the yet-to-be seeded fields with his very steampunk-looking plough working solely off of magic and had decided that it had been a while since he had gone into town. Besides, he had ordered some corn that he was vying to try out that year, and unfortunately due to the warding on his property the delivery was not able to be delivered to his farm, as he was still a paranoid man and had used the infamous Black Family Wards.

At least, those that were less vicious in punishment to the perceived threat. He was not so paranoid to have every rabbit that entered his property that had no magical resonance to be slowly melted; he was man enough to admit that it was a bit over the top in that case.

He had decided to forgo his usual transportation method of his good 'ol fashioned travel method of broom travel and had instead taken the more spacious, shiny civvie shuttle. He had left his newly sentient private warship at home as he did not feel the need to out himself as the technical ex-Executor Potter with showing such an iconic ship.

The ship, _The Sleeping Dragon_ , was an iconic ship from the way that it had been the diplomatic ship that had been the one to ferry the MSS' representatives following the First Contact War. It was widely known all across the galaxy from the media coverage that it had received at the event as well as the unique visage that Harry himself had gained a patent for his own family. It was also the first ship that had enough sustainability to gain a level of sentience.

In fact, the ship had gained sentience in a very typical fashion. It had been seeped in enough magic, with its chaotic nature abundant, and its purpose already laid out before it in the latent intent behind all of the magic imbued in it. Through nominal means of the combination of intent and chaos, the order of a mind emerged. The mind was a fairly simplistic mind, matching that of the intelligence of a wild dragon; in a sense, the newly emerged mind had not the capacity for logic and reasoning, but it had the capacity for feeling and instinct. In other words, it was not sapient, but it was sentient.

In its regard of Harry himself, the ship saw him as a loyal dog would regard its master. It had also sulked slightly when it knew that Harry was not taking it to town and instead had taken the inferior, to it, shuttle.

Honestly, it was one time that _The Sleeping Dragon_ had excited some colonists, and now his owner won't take him in public anymore. Not that the poor ship had been able to think like that, but it certainly had the ability to feel the emotion behind such reasoning. Hence, the slight sulking it did.

Harry had felt the way his shop was feeling and had chuckled slightly. He approached the formidable warship and ran his hand along her hull and told her, "We will go on a mission soon, how does that sound, hmm?" Immediately, Harry had felt the excitement and satisfaction that his answer had garnered from _The Sleeping Dragon_.

Harry left for the nearby farmers' town.

Harry marvelled at the fact that there were no roads on the planet, nor were there any other signs of other forms of travel. It was interesting to harry, as he had been used to what he had grown up with, having been born in the nineteen eighties he had been familiar with the multiple forms of land travel. He had even been used to the forms of magical travel that the magister population used and now they looked more like advanced technology than magic.

Not that the old versions of magic did not hold true anymore, it had just fallen out of fashion. Well, it had fallen out of fashion for those that were not diagnosed with minor paranoia; Harry's paranoia had demanded him to remember all that he had ever learned to best apply it to a hostile situation.

He had gotten into the cockpit of the small civilian shuttle, powered it up, and had raised up off of the ground a good few metres in order to he had triggered the preset port-trans drive coordinates.

Due to the evolution of the portkey aspect of magic and its application, a wider radius of distance had been opened up for the civilian population to easily access, whereas before the magics had to have been used by one person; the average person did not have enough magic available to apparate or create a portkey for such distances. For a frame of reference, the closest town to Harry's expansive property was approximately the distance between London and Hogwarts; if Harry had tried to take the standard methods of travel from his time such as the Hogwarts Express, it would have taken an entire day's travel. An average person would not have been able to apparate that distance, nor would they have been able to pick up their delivery of seed using the floe, and Harry did not wish to advertise his abilities to his neighbours.

An interesting side note about the port-trans system was how it avoided simply appearing inside of something already occupying a certain space. It had been a safety feature added after the realisation that it was becoming hazardous due to a large amount of traffic, which later became apparent when _The Humanity_ , a civilian interplanetary transport vessel, had spontaneously combusted upon the sudden manifestation around the _Ishimura_ , a mining vessel. Thankfully, there were no deaths, but there were many casualties as magisters had grabbed people around them and apparated out of the ship and onto the ground not far below. Due to the stress of the situation, there were many splices that had happened, which were fairly trivial for responding emergency services to mend.

After that event, the port-trans drive had been equipped with a traffic control unit. The unit, the TCU, first scanned a section of space-time to see if it had any occupants for the coordinates given and then it would announce whether or not the PTDs could safely be activated. If they could not, the TCU would then randomly choose a location close to the coordinates and repeat the process. When it found a sufficient chunk of space-time without any occupants, it would send out gravitational pulses mimicking that of a combination of a digital data transfer and a radio wave, but was sensed instantly by other TCUs so that the pilot of the crafts could avoid the area.

The coordinates were accepted, and Harry had then proceeded to find a landing zone.

No matter what city or town one was in, they were all the same in that it was a nightmare to try and find a "parking space".

He had stepped out of the shuttle on top of the post office's landing pad, intent on going into said office to pick up the mail-ordered material he required.

* * *

Screams rang through the air, and Harry's body snapped into action before his mind had a chance to register exactly what those screams meant. It was instinct on his part, ingrained within him through years of training and reinforced through paranoid tendencies. By the time Harry had realised what had happened fully, he had already fired off two piercing hexes at what he recognised to be batarians. They had burst into the modest post office that he had taken cover in, having already shouted out to the occupants to take cover in an automatic act of heroism and then was quickly reduced to withering messes on the ground due to the missing chunks of necessary flesh.

Harry sprinted out of the office itself and fired at everything dubbed an "enemy" via his years of experience in regards to target acquisition. He already knew that _The Sleeping Dragon_ was on her way, and was able to bank on that fact when an enchanted wristband of his, a type of TCU, had notified him that she had engaged her PTD and gave a general direction of where she materialised.

Even if Harry hadn't had a general direction given via his personnel-type TCU, _The Sleeping Dragon_ was positively _radiating_ anger which donated her presence.

The dragon had awoken, and something was threatening her treasure, thus she acted accordingly.

Harry was immensely grateful that he had taken the time to duel wield wands, highlighted by the way he was being shot at by what appeared to be taser rifles while he casted hex after hex at the invaders. He absently noted that there were a few private citizens that were brave enough to realise that they carried a weapon with them at all times and were creative enough to use what they knew to devastating effect.

He also took note of the fact that there were a few dispersed aurors in the populated area focusing more on defensive magics than attacking the invaders in order to protect the citizens. He saw the local transfiguration professor for the local school by said school defending it the best way he could, using his craft to a deadly effect. He saw a contingent of four batarian slavers head for the school children, but they were viciously _torn apart_ a charm's professor that had decided it best to summon the hearts of the heartless _slavers_. He had seen a crying young lady running from a firing squad of batarians that had been intelligent enough to note that the tasers had little to no effect on their prey, and had switched to tranquilisers.

Harry was surprised that the electronics even worked on the magical world. Then again, it was not a terraformed planet, but a golden world.

There were a few darts that had stuck the poor woman, but instead of reacting as was the nominal reaction, she had strained up and turned to look at the offender with a look of unadulterated hatred. Harry's eyes widened, and had yelled with the strongest voice he could muster, "FURY!"

His shout had garnered the desired effect he had wanted, as all of the natives of the land had widened their eyes in realisation at the meaning of the word, and doubled their efforts in evacuating the area, especially around the now-transforming woman. The shout also had the happy side effect of attracting the attentions of the invaders.

The batarians did not know they had made an even greater mistake by continuing their harassment of the young lady, that was until he had started her transformation. In a normal situation, a fury transformation takes a good minute, giving enough warning before the instigator had an enraged fury on their hands or to possibly calm the normally passive subspecies. Depending on how idiotic the instigator was or what they were doing to continue their harassment, the transformation could be shortened from the nominal minute to a few seconds, as made evident in the case of the batarian slavers.

Before them all, in the relative centre of battle, soon stood a mythical creature that had caught the attentions of a few ancient religions. In Greek mythology they were the embodiments of the Nemesis, they were worshipped as the Hindu goddess Kali, and many others. It is very rare indeed that a fury's true form is ever released upon the world due to the various warnings from mythology and the direct warnings from the fury herself. That, and few if any would harm the seemingly defenceless, loveable passive woman that they normally are.

There were tears, red tears as they were not a water of any kind, but the blood of their past enemies. It hurt Harry to see them, and the volume of them, as that meant the poor woman had had a rough life. Fire leapt from the single-minded being in thin trails, as they waved in a begging way to be released.

The fury did just that.

Torrents of flame left her hands, directed skilfully from those she had deemed a 'friend' towards those she deemed a 'foe'. Metal armour melted as shields failed, skin melted and blood boiled from the heat, only for the alien liquid and steaming life to be collected in a sphere high above the fury's position. Then, when the sphere of red blood coalesced to a critical volume, it shot out at the invaders that appeared to be outside of the fury's attentions. It both drowned and burned them.

Harry did not have it within him to feel all that sorry for them.

High above the ground battle a domination of an entirely different form waged. Ineffective mass effect weaponry was fired at a significant fraction of the speed of light at freshly arriving MSSM warships only to be stopped by their kinetic barrier equivalencies. The MSSM knew that these were slaver ships, and as such had many unwilling crew members aboard the craft. It went against their code of conduct to destroy civilian targets, thus instead of firing on the ships with destructive weaponry, they fired what were essentially overpowered stunners as the magic within the bolts of magical energy would act like vicious EMPs. The batarian ships were quickly shut off, cutting off the air support that was available, and then were levitated by the MSSM so as to not bring about casualties abort the ship.

Since the batarian ships were already disabled, there were no worries about adverse magical effects around technology, and thus the MSSM was able to send boarding parties via apparation, using coordinate based logic instead of a visual of the area. The boarding parties went in and subdued all of the crew and "cargo" non-lethally.

In truth, the only aspect of the entire battle only took so long because of the ground combat, made easier by the air support offered by _The Sleeping Dragon_ and the new reinforcements.

Harry was brought out of his intense extrospection when the shield maintained by his offhand had flickered and some metal dust accelerated at approximately one percent of the speed of light had impacted his arm. Due to the significance of the speed and mass, the dust had not gone cleanly through Harry's unarmored arm and instead had done the equivalent of blowing it off at the elbow. Harry cursed his inattention as now he had to last the rest of the battle without an arm. "Or," Harry thought. "I could take my second piece and bug one of the MSSM medics to do a field reattachment."

He did just that, having dropped to the ground, grabbed his limp hapless arm clutching a wand, and apparated onto what he recognised as _The Overbearing One_. He was able to apparate onto the secure ship simply because, even though he was a retired Executor, he still had the clearance the position granted.

There were many casualties being treated on-ship, as it was a designated military hospital ship, tasked with treating as many as possible, while most of the enlisted onboard were combat medics.

Somehow, Harry had been able to convince the healer to allow for him to gain a quick "field stitch" for an arm reattachment with the stern orders to see a healer within the next four relevant hours for a thorough treatment. He had readily agreed and the healer reluctantly declared him fit for combat again.

Harry joined the fray once again, wondering what had happened to the standard secrecy wards that every colony needed.

* * *

 **A/N: I hope you all enjoyed this installment of TPN. Please leave a review of what you thought about the chapter. At the moment my muse says that the next chapter of one of my works will be fairly soon, too, so look forward to that!**

 **Take care, all of you, and 'till next time!**


	9. Chapter 8: If They Are Out to Get You

**Chapter 8: … If They Really Are Out to Get You**

* * *

"And that," Harry pondered, "Is why I will never engage a healer in combat."

Harry had been sitting in a hospital bed, holding his left arm, as he watched the field stitch slowly disintegrate. It was about four hours after he had received the field treatment for his mangled left arm, and Harry now knew the significance of why the MSSM healer had told him to see another within that time frame.

It turned out that the treatment administered used a time-limited conjuration of human viscera in order to "glue" pieces of human limbs back together again. Harry thought that it acted not dissimilar to the human-engineered medigel, but in a much more versatile and powerful application with the limitation of non-permanence.

The degradation of such conjured biological matter was always creepy, as it spontaneously decided that it wished to be something different before it eventually disappeared entirely. In Harry's case, it had slowly turned into a lump of coal, only to eventually disappear into nothingness. For the brief time period where the section of his arm between his elbow and mid-forearm was coal, Harry's mind registered intense pain similar to that of when he had his arm blown off in the first place, but without the painkiller in the form of adrenaline brought on by battle.

Harry was just glad that at least some of his arm was recovered in the first place and that such weaponry used and poor accuracy allowed for such recoverability. Not that Harry enjoyed being shot with _anything_ , but it was nice when the damage to him was limited.

See, what happens when dust particles are shot out of a weapon at a fleshy unarmored arm such as Harry's at approximately one percent of the speed of light, that dust acts like buckshot fired from a shotgun at close range. Essentially, every part of Harry's arm that the dust had gone through, had been torn to pieces and turned to human jam. That left a large part of his arm missing, which was where the field stitch came into play.

The field stitch made Harry not wish to ever engage a healer into combat because he knew that healers could reverse the effects that had happened to the degrading arm, and much, much worst.

He was very grateful that all medical professionals took an oath that prevented them from using what they had learned against others unless attacked by said others.

Harry was jerked out of his musings when his healer walked into the room, holding a clipboard of all things, and they had said, "Oh good, the field stitch is done. Time for the amputation." Harry sighed, used to what was about to happen as he had lost limbs before in various assassination attempts against his person. "I know, Mr Potter, but you also know that it's necessary if you ever want to re-grow your arm." Harry just continued to sulk, which he would later deny to having done, "Lay down and place your arm flush against the silver side table, please. Do you want to try painkillers again this time?" It was asked by one Healer Twisted White while said healer was pulling on her sanitary hospital gloves.

Harry did as told, reasoning that it was generally not a good idea to anger a literal demon like Healer White when it was obvious that she was just called in from the way she was not dressed in the usual healer's uniform. Harry answered the question with a curt, "No." Over the years he had become tolerant to the usual pain killing magics healers used against all odds, and because of his unique status as a metamorph conventional means used by mundanes were even less effective than the average magister. Sometimes the methods were rejected outright or lead to a more painful experience as Harry had to fight with the intrusive compound in his body.

"Hmmm," Healer White hummed, picking up Harry's unattached arm and setting it aside onto a blast-resistant stainless plate to be dealt with later. As she did so, her black spade-headed tail slipped underneath a potion flask and brought it to hover in front of Harry. "Drink," she commanded, "It's a supplement to help for after."

It said a lot about Harry's trust in the woman in the room that he didn't even check the potion's contents before he downed it in one go. Hundreds of years worth of advancement, and the taste of potions were still terrible; he grimaced in distaste, and while he was distracted with the nasty potion, Healer White had sliced through Harry's arm just above the jagged flesh to make a clean cut. Thoughts of the potion abandoned, Harry hollered in pain and had fruitlessly jerked his left arm in reflex. Healer White winced slightly, but that did not stop her from immediately setting about bandaging the wound temporarily.

When Harry calmed down considerably whilst Twisted had waited patiently, she asked, "Are you ready?" Upon receiving a nod, she had brought up a magical scan of Harry's original base form and manipulated the glowing golden image so that Harry could see a magnified image of his base left arm, complete with muscle positions, nerve endings, circulatory system, skeleton, and more. Each aspect was defined and a clear description was offered for each facet of the arm, and Harry, using the information, began one of the most difficult processes a metamorph could complete.

Harry began to re-grow his left arm.

As he did so, his personal healer force-fed him potions to aid in his endeavors so as to have the required materials to create the damn arm in the first place, but had to force-feed them because Harry was so focused on his arm that he was near catatonic save for the flicking of his eyes across the visual overlay of an arm where his real one had eventually occupied.

Drenched in sweat and finally finished, Harry had one thing to say before passing out, "A metamorphic biology is complicated."

Healer Twisted White, private healer for one Harry J Potter, said to the unconscious body, "You have no idea," while she began to check the individual pulse of each of Harry's individual hearts from that time he had been shot in the heart and had decided to remedy the situation by creating an entirely new circulatory system.

There was a reason that she only had one patient. Sometimes, though, she felt less like a medical professional and more like a supernanny. She was not alone in her thoughts regarding one Harry James Potter.

* * *

There was one very good reason Harry had went on to retire; Harry was tired of the position and felt that he had accomplished enough to consider retirement. So, it was entirely understandable that Harry had nearly exploded in anger when he was told that he was required out to be taken out of retirement for the interim. However, Harry understood the need for him to step out of cushy retirement that he had been in for a relative twenty years, considering the events that had led to the invasion of Mindoir.

It turned out that what had happened to the standard defences that had been placed on every colonial world like Mindoir had been removed from Mindoir by order of the Executor. When Harry heard about that, he had immediately launched an investigation utilising his retained clearance level into the actions of Executor Mittens. He had found that Executor Mittens had planned for Mindoir to be used as bait for the slavers of the Terminus Systems to attack so as to have an excuse to attack said slavers.

Now, being who he was, Harry approved of the thought to destroy slavery in the universe. However, Harry had originally made it very clear to the MSSM that it was _never_ acceptable to place innocent civilians in harm's way regardless of the scenario. Doing so meant being court marshalled; it was Harry's firm belief that there was always another way.

It was the duty of the MSSM to protect the citizens, not use them as bait for their own gains.

Executor Mittens, a house elf that had been appointed to the position after his application was reviewed, had done just that.

Harry did not know why Mittens had done it; perhaps it was a product of house elf culture regarding slavery if it was a misguided attempt at proactively protecting the MSS citizens, if it was from Mittens foolishly thinking that he was removed from prosecution or a combination of the three. Either way, Harry had made a report on his findings while declassifying the relevant information so that Mittens could be impeached and removed from power. After Harry had made his report, a mind healer had made their own confidential report in regards to the health of the house elf and had reported that though it had been hidden well, Mittens was not of sound mind.

Now with a powerful office vacant until a new Executor could be named, matched with the fact that the MSS had gone into martial law due to an invasion, and mixed with a burgeoning war for good measure, it had been requested that Harry returned from retirement for the interim.

Didn't mean Harry had to like it, though.

Now Harry was stepping onto a station with a contingent of guards to be met with both his best friends Hannah and Hermione that he had not set foot on for over thirteen years or approximately thirty-nine relevant years, ever since the First Contact War. There was a reason for that too, as Harry had been reminded harshly of his first impression of the creepy station when he saw it again.

He had made his way to the council chambers for the appointment he had made with a full council session. He had also invited various news outlets to join them in the session, as he did not request the session to be privatised, and he wanted to avoid any sort of spin or bias from the media. Finally reaching the council chambers, he found a contingent of reporters waiting outside of the closed doors, and Harry was reminded of a little human saying that started with, "What happens behind closed doors…"

Harry had smiled and nodded to the reporters and then walked into the chambers with the reporters following behind and shuffling off to the side to watch and report. It didn't take long for the proceedings to start.

* * *

One Captain Madeline Williams nee Brooks, mother of Ashley Madeline Williams and wife of Lieutenant Williams, and daughter-in-law of _the_ Admiral Williams was shocked.

She had been fairly happy lazing about on her off-day to spend some valuable cuddle-time with her twelve-year-old daughter watching some politicians and reporters flap their lips on a video-screen. Imagine her surprise when the news outlet she had been watching and mocking had suddenly had some breaking news coverage live from the council chambers.

At first, she had been intrigued as such an event was fairly rare, but then she was introduced to the image of a woman that she had "met" at a bar on Shanxi some thirteen years previous. On screen, the image of the one-night-stand was in the presence of two other women, one recognised as the head of the MSS, Prime Minister Longbottom, and another that was not recognised by the news outlets.

The one that Williams recognised as Tevos, the councillor with a reputation for being the most diplomatic and sensible, started the proceedings, "Why are there reporters in this meeting?"

The woman that persuaded Madeline to be more… adventurous, and the one between the other two, responded, "Because I invited them. I do so love the idea of the freedom of the press; the people have a right to know what is going on in their government after all, don't you agree?"

Tevos blinked, surprised by the answer from a person that she did not recognise , then she asked, "True, true. Now, might as I who you might be? I was under the impression that this was a meeting with the Magical Sapience Society's delegates, and apparently, I have been mistaken as clearly it's not of delegates because Prime Minister Longbottom is in attendance. Thank you for coming, by the way, prime minister." She nodded to the indicated woman.

Harry, Madeline finally remembered the woman's name, frowned. She then turned to the other elderly looking woman with her, and the woman cheerfully replied in a loud tone, "Harry, dear, you are wearing your softer features." It was the woman that hadn't been recognised by the media outlets and said in a tone that reminded Madeline eerily of the time that her daughter was teasing one of her friends with information that they didn't know.

In other words, a childish teasing tone that did not match the age lines upon the woman's face.

A look of realisation overtook Harry's face, and then, Harry's image seemed to shimmer. Quickly, Harry's entire body shifted and morphed and soon enough the proud good-looking woman that Madeline was _very_ familiar with was replaced with that of a proud good-looking man. Madeline was stunned, already the assumption that the woman, nay, the man was a magister and not a human was already a little much for Madeline to take in. Now, the thought that the person she had an intimate night with had been an iconic man supposedly upwards of four times her age and the head of an entire military to boot at the time, was a little too much.

Apparently, a being able to switch between two distinctly separate biological constructs easily was a little too much for everyone else as well seeing as those present including the drone operators froze for a moment to try to take the action in, so Madeline's reaction could be forgiven.

"That would be Acting Executor Potter, Councilor Tevos, as much as I wanted to say in retirement. I apologise for not introducing myself earlier. Now, I believe you already know my dear friend Prime Minister Longbottom nee Abbott," the woman waved, and everyone present nodded in absent-minded ascent, even Madeline herself, "But I don't believe that you have ever been introduced to my childhood friend Chief Justice Weasley nee Granger." Just like when the press had recognised and confirmed the identity of Executor Potter when Chief Justice Weasley had been identified her name had been clearly displayed in the distinct standard way that media outlets favoured in the form of a banner at the bottom of the vid screen.

"Mommy, how did that man change from a girl to a boy?" Madeline heard her twelve-year-old daughter Ashley ask innocently, to which Madeline replied,

"I don't know, Ashley. I don't know. Maybe you'll get to ask them some day." Though, if she were honest with herself, Madeline really did not want Ashley to get a chance to seeing as whenever Harry Potter was involved something was about to happen.

What happened next furthered such a superstition.

* * *

"I'm sorry, but what did you say?"

Harry replied to the councillor's question with, "I had said: The batarian hegemony is invading an MSS colony, and thus the MSS had declared an automatic martial law.

"As a reminder, martial law is only declared if a threat is found that threatens the greater Magical Sapience Society or its allies that cannot be resolved through diplomatic means and is automatically ended when the threat is dealt with. In this case, it was determined that the threat in the form of the batarian hegemony cannot be resolved through peaceful means.

"The MSSM respectfully requests that the council races provide aid in the form of ships for when we free the slaves held hostage."

"Why can the conflict not be resolved through peaceable means?" Councilor Tevos asked, a true diplomat at heart.

"Well, the batarian hegemony is based on slavery in its entirety, and it is known that they do not treat said slaves in any reasonable conduct, thus they tend to run out of slaves or are so greedy that they wish to gain more slaves constantly. The only way that they can do so is through the poaching of other sapient races such as our allies. This poses a great risk to the overall safety and integrity of the MSS and MSSM, respectively.

"Mixed with that the fact that the batarian hegemony had already declared war by way of invading an MSS colonial world and the policy of the response to any invading force is complete annexation, no this cannot be resolved through peaceful means.

"In fact, we are merely here to extend the courtesy that we will be conquering the batarian hegemony, to warn you and the rest of the greater galactic society to expect a contingent of liberated slaves for each species, and to request aid in the form of a ferrying service for said liberated slaves considering the incompatibility of magic and technology.

"Though, it must be stated that the transportation of the liberated is not a pressing issue, as we, the entirety of the MSS, will offer up the option of the newly freed slaves to go to a rehabilitation program free of charge in order to overcome what had been done to them. It could take anywhere between one to twenty standard weeks to restore the mental health of the victims. Again, this is merely a warning of what is to come mixed with a press release for efficiency."

There was a profound silence following Harry's declaration. Then, calmly, "Do you have proof of your claims?" It was said this time by the salarian councillor, quiet until that point in time.

Wordlessly, Harry looked to his left, straight into the camera of a hovering drone. To Madeline, it appeared as if he was looking straight into her own eyes, and she knew that countless others felt the same. He said, speculatively, "I don't know if this will harm the drones. Awe, well, we shall see."

* * *

It as completely silent. He had shown the council and by extension the greater galaxy sensitive information pertaining to a snapshot of what would happen in regards to a worst-case scenario of a surprise attack on a colonial world. Harry had spun the information so that it gave further incentive so that there were no more misguided grandiose ideas about attacking the MSS. It was further proof to the rest of galactic society that they held no chance against the MSS underneath the guise of proof that the batarian slavers had had the idiotic overconfidence in themselves to try anything against the MSS.

The best part was how Harry defined it as, "Mind you, this is _before_ the MSSM arrived. All you are about to see are private citizens using what is defined as 'civil magic' and not 'military magic' or 'forbidden magic'. The images of the citizens are censored to best protect their privacy, and the video has been tailored to show the least amount of carnage as possible so as not to give you all nightmares.

"The batarians bit off more than they could chew, and we, the Magical Sapience Society's Military wish to express our sincerest displeasure of what they had done. All the better if it rids the galaxy of the abomination known as the largest slave trade in the galaxy."

If anything, it was the last part that had won the public over; it did not matter, for the public had been won over.

* * *

 **A/N: I hope you all enjoyed this installment of TPN. The next chapter will be about the actual campaign against the batarian hegemony, which I hope will be as entertaining and dark as I'm envisioning it to be.**

 **A link to a picture of Harry's Healer:**

* * *

bit . ly/HarrysPrivateNurse

 **by a friend of mine, Hannah MacGrath.**


	10. Chapter 9: Surprising Operation Repo

At the same time as Harry was giving a press-release to the greater galactic society, he was also talking with a few tactical advisers in a military LiCaIDR (Linked Communications and Information Distribution Room). He was in the process of finding out that Executor Mittens hadn't been entirely insane with placing a magister colony in jeopardy. He had used his extensive intelligence to come up with a full-fledged plan for a counter attack.

In fact, so extensive was it that Harry figured all he had to do to win the campaign was to issue the relevant orders. That was if everything went according to plan, and considering the plan allowed for flexibility in many parts of it, it was promising. It also turned out that the MSSM had pre-scouted the Batarian Hegemony along with any potential allies to be called in.

He commenced the campaign by ordering the first parts of Operation Truman to commence.

* * *

Sitting in their Ivory towers, the higher casts were becoming anxious. It wasn't from the threats issued by the relatively new race to the galactic scene, no; the Batarian Hegemony had been threatened with invasion from anyone between the newly (to them) castrated Turians to the monotone Elcor.

However, what was different this time was that: A) The threat was made publicly; BY) The invasion fleet had been a failure with the newbies' colony; C) Their Relays were being blockaded similar to the Relay 144 incident, and most worryingly D) Their electronics systems were fluctuating and experiencing the oddest of all qualities.

Their electronics were needed to keep the slaves subjugated and broken, and without them, the slaves could get some ideas: they couldn't have that. The heads of the Batarian Hegemony, the heads of the founding families or oldest families were in the process of starting an emergency meeting so as to come up with a response plan.

Then it happened.

They were hearing it, but they were having a hard time believing it.

Belted out from the sky, where invisible enemy ships no-doubt floated. Were some loud sounds. It sounded like some instruments along with a voice or two singing. The words were spoken in a language they were unfamiliar with, or at least their omnitools hadn't been updated with the language yet, but the overall feelings they received from the soundtrack helped them discern the meanings. The shocked silence of the room was broken when those present came to the realisation that this alien music was propaganda to subvert their own fear-inducing media that'd put Joseph Goebbels to shame.

It was the music of revolutions, hope, righteous fury, and happiness from what they could tell of the sounds assaulting their senses.

It did not bode well for the upper casts.

* * *

Finally, at the moment, Harry was on a very important mission that he'd given himself. He, along with a team of elites, was on their way to the panic room of the Batarian Hegemony's seat of power. Honestly, it was more of a high-tech bunker than just a panic room, if Harry was being honest.

It was built on the Batarian homeworld of Khar'shan, a veritable fortress in the form of a tower to house the so-called government. Harry and his team were headed towards was the bunker buried some decent amount of kilometres underneath the city. Built into the procedures of the Batarian government was how if there was an obvious threat of aerial bombardment or a similar threat, the high ruling party would retreat to said bunker.

The problem with this was that they were not under any threat of bombardment yet, so the auxiliary seat of power was empty of personnel.

Harry and his team stealth their way passed multiple Batarian guards. They couldn't use any magic at the moment lest they wish to be discovered and instead had to resign themselves to using martial arts to take down any tangos in the way.

Surprisingly, it didn't take long for the small team to make it all the way down to the shelter.

Finally, at their goal, Harry issued the OK for magic use. As such, it didn't take long for the five to gain entrance to the secure facility.

Once inside, two of their number took to securing the entrances. The other three went ahead to clear the facility of any potential hostiles. Once deemed safe, Harry used his to the invading fleet, "Operation Hellfire is a go.:" There was a very quick confirmation from receiving the order, then the campaign truly began.

Harry turned his attention to the display of decadence bought by the degradation of life. The Auxiliary command room was both functional and lavish.

Plush furniture littered the room, mixed with sensible equipment fit for a full-fledged command centre, save for the condensed nature inherent in the name of "Auxiliary". Harry was particularly amused by his soldiers eyeing the furniture enviously. Their policies specifically prevented then from using the furniture because common sense told them that any of the enemies' objects could be booby trapped.

From there, it was relatively easy for Harry to assume the shape of the batarian leaders, and then assume command of the entire resistance. Harry likened the entire "war effort" to playing chess with himself, but being biased towards one side.

* * *

It was in the middle of the mock campaign that the MSS had been able to elect Harry's replacement. Despite the fact that Harry was technically the ultimate authority in the MSS at the time due to the automatic declaration of martial law, the MSS proper was still able to function as they were, they just weren't able to act with their nominal full authority. Thus, despite being in wartime, they were able to elect the next MSSM executor.

He was quite surprised that it was one of his own grandchildren as he hadn't been informed of such an interest in warfare by his granddaughter. He resolved to spend more time with his family in his retirement.

It also gave Harry an opportunity to train her in the situation of being at war, in a generally safe manner while Harry was composing the enemy's movements.

After the war effort, the MSS quickly found themselves responsible for billions of newly liberated slaves, from many different backgrounds. Of course, this wasn't a surprise and the MSSM had been preparing for the eventuality ever since Executor Mittens had started on the Batarian campaign, so it wasn't much of a problem. The already-made compounds, fully staffed and stocked to accompanying such an influx of patients.

In fact, one of the eventualities they had set up for was the influx of mail from outside sources from concerned family. Basically what the mail offices were trained to do, was instead of searching for the correct recipient, they spelled the correspondence to find the named addressee via owl mail.

In case the recipient wasn't on that planet, the owl would only take wing to the correct outgoing mail collection to the correct planet. No-one really knew how the owls knew where to go, and their researchers over time were never able to figure it out. It was an interesting oddity, but most were content to just take it for granted.

With Harry's work finally done, he decided to take up his promise to himself a while ago to take his retirement seriously.

Thus, he decided to move to a Systems Alliance farming colony, under the guise of being a simple farmer of potatoes in a completely different body image so as not to be recognised. Since it was only a simple guise, Harry had a lot of free time on his hands in his retirement, and he dedicated this time to spend either with his family, relaxing on beaches, or tinkering with different trending passions of his.

* * *

When John Sheppard woke up that morning, according to the ship's clock, he was hoping that he wouldn't have to deal with another attempt against a human colony by the collectors. However, he was still unsurprised when the Illusive Man had contacted him on the QEC to tell him that another human colony in the Terminus Systems was being plundered for the biological commodities.

Or whatever the humans were being used for.

Looking on the bright side, it allowed for John to test Mordin's solution to the seeker swarm problem. He was slightly surprised at the speed at which the doctor came up with a solution as based on Mordin's own estimations it should have taken much longer than it did. Nevertheless, John was happy for the opportunity presented to him. And, if what the Illusive Man had to say was correct, John would be able to possibly find the next member of his team on the colony.

When he had gotten there, however, he was surprised at how inactive the scene was. There were the usual buzzing noises from the swarms still floating around, but there were no colonist pods scattered around the place. He and his team briefly entertained the idea that they were a tad too late until they saw the prominent collector ship still towering above the young colony.

Quickly adapting to the situation at hand, he had ordered his team onwards, in search of the cause of the odd phenomena. It was when they were coming up to a park's centre in the town that they heard the distinctive symphonies of war. There were explosions, screeching, and the angry crackling of fires.

Finally, at the centres of the source, Sheppard was surprised to find the visage of an elder man firing an unrecognisable weapon at the collectors. It was to great effect, too, as it appeared the only shield the Collectors could use against it were biotic barriers, and even then it was only partial resistance. The old man fired jets of fire against the seeker swarms that came too close to him, as well as at the husks. Powerful green jets of energy shot out to meet the Harbingers, stopping their reign immediately, while simple bolts would pierce a collector's carapace and continue into a second.

John wanted one.

His and his team's awe was interrupted by the arrival of a few bullets lighting up his shield. Quickly snapping out of his reverie, he returned fire with fervour.

The old man looked over towards him, and yelled to him, "Good! You distract them, and I'll continue rescuing the humans!" John had to raise an eyebrow at the man's wording. Wasn't _he_ a human too?

But then, suddenly, the man wasn't there anymore. This only really meant one main thing, that the man was a magister, and that his age would, therefore, be drastically unrepresented by his physical traits. He looked to be about fifty, but for all John knew the man could be closer to a hundred fifty.

Either way, John stayed true to the "distract them" order, even if he didn't really understand what the man meant. Really, Sheppard only had to work on his original objective to say that he was distracting the collectors.

* * *

Normally, apparating in a combat situation was generally reserved for the stupid or desperate. It didn't take much common sense to realise the fact that, when there were a lot of flying projectiles around, disappearing and appearing somewhere else was generally not a good idea. It's simply from the fact that you could be appearing in the path of a projectile or with the projectile within your own body.

However, the only thing that made it different from then and now was that Harry was apparating to a place where there were no fighting. The alien invaders were not firing anything before Harry had arrived. Thus, it was fairly easy for Harry to appear amongst the working flashlight heads and cockroach-erectus bastards.

It took a considerably small amount of time for him to work his way through the first wave of enemies that were in the area, especially since his personally modified hand cannon used magic to nullify any of the flashlight headed ones before they could get anything in edgewise. Harry quickly collected the colonists that were locked in stasis and then deposited them into wizard's space.

Harry repeated this same process until the invaders had inevitably worked up a defence against it. When he had found the invaders in another potential combat site prepared for his arrival, even though it was slight, he had quickly abandoned the original repetition and switched tactics.

Instead of appearing among the enemy, he had quickly apparated into an ideal sniper's nest. He took out his wand to cast the necessary chameleon spells he knew of, took out his own modified military-grade MAMSR (Magister Anti-Material Sniper Rifle) from his back, expanded it, and sighted his first target.

It didn't take long for him to clear the new area, and then it didn't take long for him to collect the civvies either before moving on. By the time that Harry had cleared the colony of civvies, he hadn't needed to change his tactic any more than he already did.

He decided to find where the marines rocking Cerberus colours went off to. He accomplished using the same methods that he used for finding the podded colonists.

Essentially it was a device that used the principles of the point-me spell mixed with an exactness of a way-point on an Alliance soldier's HUD. It helped that it was an addon to his own glasses with some synergy with his own mind to instinctively know what he was looking for. It was a blessing for anything between military logistics to finding your wand before you leave for work.

The military-grade ones also helped in knowing what was around the area in order to give a semi-safe apparation point.

Thus, Harry apparated to where the supposed "rescuers" were. That was also how Harry had almost been another example of both friendly fire, and why apparating in a combat zone was generally a bad idea, as the loud pop from Harry's quick apparation brought fire upon him from some twitchy fighters. Thankfully, Harry had anticipated such a thing and had already had his draining shields online beforehand.

It was very difficult to apparate with shielding, however, and the shield itself had only been able to be extended to the contact of his skin and clothing in order to be apparated. It was also why it looked like he was bulletproof, as his skin looked like it was the one shedding the accelerated shavings and not a shield.

The firing immediately stopped when he was recognised as an ally, tentative as that might have been on his end. Harry eyed the odd assortment of combatants, considering the Cerberus armoured humans standing next to the clearly non-terran people. Harry considered them for a moment, then asked with a roguish grin, "How d'you feel about nuking that ship?"

* * *

 **A/N: I do apologise for the lack of updates with my account. Although, I do say that reviews do tend to be chapter fuel.**

 **That being said, the next planned (tentatively) update is for APCA and either LAC or Bellatrix's Son, in that order.**


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